Robert Lighthizer Quotes

There is no good reason for our cattle producers to have such limited market access. Our beef is the best in the world, and we need to be allowed to reach global markets.

[Defending agricultural subsidies:] France is the world's second-biggest exporter of agriculture products, and it must remain so.

America has a right to demand that the world’s markets are open to our products …

We will seek to eliminate scandalous agricultural subsidies which developed nations have that harms our own agriculture.

Let's not pretend we're in a global free market when it comes to agriculture. Every country protects, for good reason, its agricultural industries.

The idea that you could send agricultural products to Tokyo and Osaka and not pay tariffs, and you would have to pay tariffs sending them to Manchester, is quite hard to fathom in the modern world.

Old ideas of not trading because 'they won't open their markets to us' miss the entire point of allowing goods to be imported into the United States - because we want and need them and because someone here believes that the good or service received in exchange for our dollars creates value for them.

If the United States wants access to Chinese, Indian or Vietnamese markets, we must get access to theirs. U.S. protectionism is very subtle but it is very much there.

U.S. agricultural products, including safe, high-quality Montana beef, face unscientific trade restrictions in many important markets.

A form of protectionism should be enforced at national level, at least on strategic areas such as agriculture.

Most agree, whatever their party political position, that the West can and should open its agricultural markets more fully to the products of the poorer countries of the globe. They are agricultural societies that need our markets more than our charity.

The arguments for protection are more easily made attractive than those for free trade.

Demanding freedom of access to other markets isn't protectionism, it's free trade.

The arguments of the protectionists in favor of creating home markets by protecting duties, operating to exclude the taxed foreign commodities, if addressed to the manufacturing and bountied States, would be impregnable. For these States pay but a small proportion of the costs, and enjoy nearly all the benefits of the home markets so created

We are willing to open markets and cut our subsidies if others will, but we won’t do it alone.

Sugar protectionism is government planning, It is industrial policy—government picking winners and losers—applied to agriculture.

You don't need to be within the single market to trade; it's not an issue.

Rich country protectionism - barriers, subsidies and support - mean that the world supply of agricultural goods is artificially increased and world prices depressed.

Most states, for all their rhetoric in favour of free trade, are adept at trying to manipulate markets to protect and advantage their own producers.

The E.U., China, and Japan all talk free trade, and they all practice protectionism.

Opening markets abroad through trade agreements is especially important for American small businesses and manufacturers to enhance growth and job creation.

Protectionism in all its forms should be rejected, and efforts should be made to discipline measures that constitute barriers to trade.

We seek to better integrate Brazil into the world... and eliminate unfair trade practices and uncertainty for foreign trade flows.

While never the darling of pure free traders, measures to combat dumping, subsidies, and injurious import surges have always been deemed essential by open economies like the United States to maintain support for trade.

Tariffs have almost never saved a domestic industry from decline and, often times, by sheltering domestic producers from competition, only reward and prolong bad business practices.