United States President-elect Donal Trump, who will be sworn in on 20 January, announced on Tuesday 3 January that he would appoint business lawyer Robert Lighthizer to the post of US Foreign Trade Representative (USTR).
Lighthizer, 69, a former deputy trade representative under Republican President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, specialises in trade issues for a Washington law firm, representing agricultural, industrial and high tech interests.
“He has extensive experience striking agreements that protect some of the most important sectors of our economy, and has repeatedly fought in the private sector to prevent bad deals from hurting Americans”, said Trump in a press release, adding: “He will do an amazing job helping turn around the failed trade policies which have robbed so many Americans of prosperity”.
Lighthizer, whose appointment will have to be approved by the Senate, will work with the trade secretary-designate, billionaire Wilbur Ross, 79, and Peter Navarro, 67, an economist and fierce critic of China, who will lead the newly formed White House National Trade Council.
Trump has also made Jason Greenblatt, Chief Legal Officer of the Trump Organisation, his Special Representative for International Negotiations. Greenblatt will assist Trump in international negotiations of all kinds and on trade agreements throughout the world.
Trump has yet, however, to announce who is to be the agriculture secretary. At the start of January, former governor of the state of Georgia, Sonny Perdue III, was said by sources familiar with the matter to be the front-runner.
EU waits. “After the election of Donald Trump, the TTIP (Ed: EU-US free-trade agreement under negotiation since July 2013) has been put in a box which we will perhaps one day re-open. We are currently tidying up what has been negotiated over three years before publishing a summary”, Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said in an interview with French daily Libération at the start of January.
Malmström said at the last meeting of EU trade ministers on 11 November that she expected the TTIP talks to be suspended for an unknown period of time, following Trump’s election to the US Presidency, stating that the ball was now in the American court on what is to happen to the process (see EUROPE 11666).
The TTIP negotiations could not, as both sides had long hoped, be concluded before outgoing US President Barack Obama left office.
The EU’s goal is still to conclude an “ambitious, balanced and full” agreement, as the European Council of 21 October stated (see EUROPE 11652).
Despite significant progress on the regulatory pillar since the start of negotiations and at the 15th and, to date, last round of talks at the start of October (see EUROPE 11641), a considerable gulf remained on market access. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)