Perhaps nowhere in the Trump White House was the jockeying for ideological influence more raw than what staff members described as the “food fights” during trade meeting Tuesdays.
In the early months of the administration, these were the increasingly noisy battles between the China super hawks, like the senior trade adviser Peter Navarro, and free traders like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, the chief of the National Economic Council.
In one heated Oval Office argument, Mr. Cohn “lifted his leg on me,” Mr. Navarro recalled in an interview, making a gesture like a dog at a fire hydrant. Mr. Cohn declined to comment on the record.
Enter Robert E. Lighthizer, who arrived at the White House in May 2017 as the U.S. trade representative. Mr. Lighthizer, an international trade lawyer who had made millions of dollars suing China on behalf of clients like U.S. Steel, quickly lowered the decibel level at the Tuesday meetings, said Charlie Kupperman, a Trump deputy national security adviser.
He did so, Mr. Kupperman said, by using his knowledge of trade law to forge a middle ground between “Mnuchin, who was mashed potatoes on China, and Navarro, who was to the right of Attila the Hun.”
