It takes courage to go against the prevailing economic or political dogma. For the past 20 years or so, questioning the notion that free trade was always and everywhere an unadulterated good was verboten in the US.
That changed in 2018, when Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative under President Donald Trump, levied tariffs on China, a move that triggered a broader debate about decoupling, the relationship between trade and diplomacy, and what the post-neoliberal world should look like.
In his new book, No Trade Is Free, Lighthizer lays out the dynamics behind America’s new trade stance, arguing that the last two decades of what he would call a “radical free trade agenda” is a historical anomaly for the country, which like “all the great economies” was “built behind a wall of protection and often with government money”.