A new book from Robert Lighthizer, who served as Trump’s U.S. trade representative, provides a blueprint for how the former president might expand on the protectionist policies he enacted during his four years in the White House, including an economic break with China and hardball tactics with U.S. trading partners around the world.T

he vision in “No Trade is Free” represents an escalation of the trade conflicts and tariff wars that characterized the Trump years — advocating duties and trade barriers not seen for decades. Lighthizer sees it as an extension of policies that both the Trump and Biden administrations have advocated — albeit in different ways — to rebuild American manufacturing and take a harder line against Beijing.

De-coupling, not de-risking

On China, Lighthizer advocates what he calls a “strategic decoupling” — a bigger break with the Chinese economy than the “de-risking” platform pushed by Biden and European leaders. That would involve raising tariffs on Chinese goods until the U.S. achieves “balanced trade” with China — or the elimination of trade deficit — by repealing its normal trade status and raising tariffs.

Lighthizer would also crack down on new investments between the economies, allowing the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S. to deny stateside deals involving Chinese companies not only for national security reasons, but also economic competitiveness. And he would create a new government review board for American investments in the Chinese economy, advocating a similar approach to the one proposed by Sens. Bob Casey and John Cornyn in their National Critical Capabilities Defense Act and which is now being weighed by the White House.

“The likelihood of the investment causing long-term economic harm should be enough to block” investment deals, he writes.

Chinese investments in U.S. farmland and critical industries would come under special scrutiny.

Congress must “pass new authority to give the government the power to stop U.S. entities from investing in China except where it is in our interest,” Lighthizer writes. “These new powers must include prohibiting any Chinese investment in critical infrastructure or technology serving that infrastructure,” he adds, concluding that “businesses will never do this on their own.”

“Many of our [free trade agreement] partners manipulate their currency, give subsidies to their manufacturers, and maintain extensive non-tariff barriers, such as discriminatory regulatory requirements, which are harder to detect than traditional protectionism,” he writes.