The End of Free Trade: A Conversation With Robert E. Lighthizer

The Foreign Affairs Interview · Jul 30, 2026 · 52m

Almost no one in the last several decades has done more to change the American approach to trade than Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer was the U.S. trade representative in President Donald Trump’s first term. In that role, he set out to reverse Washington’s long-standing commitment to a global trading system. It was a crusade—using tariffs, among other tools—that targeted China above all but also any other country that, as he saw it, benefited from that system at the expense of the United States.

Lighthizer recently laid out his vision for a new trade order in Foreign Affairs. With Trump levying…