Trump's trade 'hammer' aims to pound China, Mexico and the WTO

Washington

THE trade talks on steel imports were dragging on, and Robert Lighthizer didn't care for the Japanese offer. So he folded it into a paper airplane and launched it across his desk at Japan's lead negotiator.

Within days, the Japanese agreed to cut their nation's share of the US steel market, a key piece of then-president Ronald Reagan's plan to curb foreign steel imports.

The 1985 deal capped weeks of negotiations in which Mr Lighthizer, then the deputy US trade representative, shocked his Japanese counterparts with rough-hewn jokes and wore them out with his disdain for their proposals, former colleagues recalled.

During one Japanese presentati…