Motstridiga uppgifter om ”tullhöken” Lighthizer

USA:s handelsrepresentant (engelska: United States Trade Representative, vanligen förkortat som USTR) är en hög befattning inom USA:s federala statsmakt som ansvarar för att utveckla och ge rekommendationer angående USA:s handelspolitik till USA:s president, har plenipotentiär fullmakt att genomföra såväl bilaterala och multilaterala handelsförhandlingar och till uppgift att samordna internationella handelsfrågor. Handelsrepresentanten har ambassadörsrang och åtnjuter samma förmåner som andra beskickningschefer. Handelsrepresentanten utses av presidenten med senatens godkännande ("råd och samtycke").

Robert Emmet Lighthizer (; born October 11, 1947) is an American attorney and government official who was the United States Trade Representative in the Donald Trump administration from 2017 to 2021. After he graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1973, Lighthizer joined the firm of Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C. He left the firm in 1978 to work as chief minority counsel and later staff director and chief of staff of the Senate Committee on Finance under Chairman Bob Dole. In 1983, Robert Lighthizer was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be Deputy U.S. Trade Representative for President Ronald Reagan. In 1985, Lighthizer joined the Washington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP as a partner and led the firm's international trade group. On January 3, 2017, President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Lighthizer as his U.S. Trade Representative. Lighthizer was confirmed by the Senate on May 11, 2017, by a vote of 82–14. Lighthizer was an architect of American trade policy during Trump's presidency. A protectionist and a trade skeptic, his policies are oriented toward protection of manufacturing in the United States. Lighthizer played a key role in the administration's renegotiation of NAFTA and the United States' trade war with China. Many of these trade policies have been preserved, and in some cases, extended by the Biden administration.