There’s One Person Trump Absolutely Needs in His Administration

As Donald Trump assembles his economic team, a tension seems to have emerged between his desire to reassure Wall Street and his promise to push back against globalization by enacting sweeping tariff policies.

Despite calling himself “a tariff man,” Mr. Trump has influential backers who would apparently like to see him forget his trade priorities. Elon Musk recently cheered tariff-cutting moves by President Javier Milei of Argentina. Some leading candidates for top economic posts in the new administration, such as the hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, as well as Mr. Trump’s pick for secretary of commerce, the Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick, have been criticized as too committed to World Trade Organization protocols or insufficiently supportive of Mr. Trump’s tariff plans. Mr. Trump himself is reportedly concerned that his nominee for Treasury secretary not disrupt the stock market’s strong performance since his election victory.

But to deliver on his longstanding economic vision of prioritizing American workers and industry, Mr. Trump will need people in his administration who share his understanding of trade and can advance it effectively. This means people who regard tariffs not just as a negotiating tactic or foreign-policy tool but also as a broad means of raising revenue and promoting industry. It also means people with a track record of working within institutions while building consensus across partisan and ideological divides.

For these reasons, Mr. Trump should assign an important role on his economic team to Robert Lighthizer, the veteran trade negotiator who has championed Mr. Trump’s plans to revive American industry and transform the global economy. (Mr. Trump has reportedly told allies he wants Mr. Lighthizer to serve as a “trade czar.”)

Mr. Lighthizer served as the U.S. trade representative in the first Trump administration, which defied decades of free-trade orthodoxy by enacting new tariffs on goods from China. That move pales in comparison to the far-reaching agenda Mr. Trump has proposed for his second term, which includes a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods and a blanket tariff of up to 20 percent on goods from other countries.

If enacted, these levies would constitute a drastic change in U.S. trade policy. Rather than being narrowly deployed to protect strategic industries, the tariffs would be applied universally in order to raise revenue and promote domestic manufacturing. They would also be used to force an economic decoupling from China. This change would mean the decisive abandonment of the dream of a globally integrated economy.