Trump had great instincts and was a political genius, Kushner said, but he was going to take some getting used to. “You’re going to have to learn how to handle him. How to relate to him.”
Though he had not been a Trump supporter during the 2016 campaign, Porter had accepted the job. By Inauguration Day he had not yet met Trump. During the speech Porter sat behind the podium and winced when Trump invoked “American carnage.” He left two thirds of the way through the speech so he could begin his duties and meet the new president.
“I’m Rob Porter, Mr. President. I’m your staff secretary.” It was clear Trump had no clue what that was or who Porter was. Jared told Trump that Porter was going to structure and order Trump’s life.
Trump looked at the two of them as if to say, What are you talking about? You’re not doing anything like that. No one’s going to do that. The president walked away without saying anything to find a TV screen.
The first official piece of paper for Trump to sign was the legislation granting retired Marine General James Mattis a waiver to become secretary of defense. Mattis had retired from the military less than the legally mandated seven years before being permitted to serve as secretary of defense.
Another matter was withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a regional free trade deal negotiated under Obama that lowered tariffs and provided a forum to resolve intellectual property and labor disputes between the U.S. and 11 other nations, including Japan, Canada and numerous countries in Southeast Asia.
During the transition several people had told Trump that he didn’t have to do it on day one. It was a little more complicated. It ought to be discussed.
“No way, no how,” Trump said. “This was on the campaign. We’re not backing off this. We’re signing it. Draw it up.”
He signed the papers to formally withdraw on January 23, the first full weekday of his presidency.
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“The Trump trade agenda does indeed remain severely hobbled by political forces within the West Wing,” Peter Navarro, the White House assistant heading the National Trade Council, wrote in an Eyes Only two-page memo to the president and Chief of Staff Priebus on March 27, 2017.
Navarro, who agreed with Trump’s view that trade deficits mattered a great deal, was furious. He had been unable to get traction in the first two months of the Trump presidency. “It is impossible to get a trade action to your desk for consideration in a timely manner,” Navarro wrote.
He unleashed at Rob Porter, the staff secretary. “Any proposed executive action on trade that moves through the Staff Secretary process is highly vulnerable to dilution, delay or derailment.”
Cohn “has amassed a large power base in the West Wing and his two top aides on trade . . . are skilled political operatives fundamentally opposed to the Trump trade agenda.
“Not reported in the press is that Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is part of Cohn’s ‘Wall Street Wing,’ which has effectively blocked or delayed every proposed action on trade.”
Navarro identified those fighting against “the Cohn headwinds” as Bannon, Stephen Miller, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and himself.
“Mr. President, are you aware that under pressure from the Cohn faction, I was demoted on Day One from Assistant to Deputy, given zero staff on trade, went almost three weeks without an office and have had no direct access to the Oval Office?”
Using an analogy sure to be understood by Trump, he said, “In golf terminology, I have been given only a five iron and a putter and ordered to shoot par on trade—an impossible task.” He proposed that he and the National Trade Council be given more power, staff and access. He included some news articles critical of Cohn and reporting on his increased power.
Navarro handed the memo to Porter to be forwarded to Trump and Priebus. Porter was trying to present himself as the honest broker but he had taught economics at Oxford and was convinced that Navarro’s views were outdated and unsupportable. As far as Porter was concerned Navarro was a member of the Flat Earth Society on trade deficits, like the president himself.
Porter and Cohn had formed an alliance. The staff secretary was squarely a member of the “Wall Street Wing.”
At the same time Porter saw clearly that Navarro represented the president’s heart on trade. If he forwarded the memo it could intensify the trade policy struggle and mushroom into a major fight.
Porter showed the memo to Priebus.
“This is a terrible idea,” Porter said. “I’m not going to give it [out]. I’m going to keep it on my desk, keep it in my files. Not going anywhere.”
Priebus didn’t disagree.
Porter again spoke with Priebus about trade. “We’ve got to do something about this,” he said. “An absolute and complete mess”—the Cohn-Mnuchin faction versus the Navarro-Ross faction. “It’s just a free-for-all, a melee, a sort of every-man-for-himself state of nature.”
“Well,” Priebus said, “what do you think we ought to do?”
“Somebody needs to coordinate trade.”
“Who should it be?” Priebus asked.
“In a normal administration, it would be the National Economic Council and Gary Cohn,” Porter said. That was the job—gather all the points of view, the data, integrate them if possible and present the president with some options, get a decision and develop an implementation plan.
Priebus knew the theory.
“Gary Cohn can’t do it,” Porter said, “because he’s a self-identified globalist. Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross would never let him be an honest broker coordinator of anything, and would never respect it.” And “He doesn’t want to do it anyway.”
“Well,” Priebus said, adopting Trump’s management habit of picking the person in the room, the closest at hand, “why don’t you do it?”
So Porter, the 39-year-old staff secretary with no previous experience in the executive branch, became the coordinator for trade policy and took charge of one of the major pillars and promises of the Trump presidency.
Porter began chairing 9:30 a.m. trade meetings every Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room. He invited all interested parties. Priebus gave it his blessing but did not announce anything. It just happened. Soon half a dozen cabinet secretaries and more senior staffers were showing up.
Trump later found out about the Tuesday meetings because he was talking to Porter so much on trade. Porter had developed a close enough relationship with the president, and had spent enough time with him, that all the others apparently thought his authority to chair trade coordination had come from the president.
* * *
In the meantime, Robert Lighthizer, a Washington lawyer and former deputy in Reagan’s trade office, was confirmed on May 11 as the U.S. trade representative. He was the person who was supposed to be in charge of trade issues.
On July 17, Lighthizer and Navarro brought a large poster to show Trump in the Oval Office, a brightly colored collection of boxes and arrows titled “The Trade Agenda Timeline.” It was a vision of a protectionist Trump trade agenda with 15 projected dates to start renegotiations or take action on the South Korea KORUS trade deal, NAFTA, and to launch investigations and actions regarding aluminum, steel and automobile parts. It proposed imposing steel tariffs in less than two months, after Labor Day.
Navarro and Lighthizer began the presentation. Trump seemed very interested.
Porter arrived several minutes after and soon began objecting strenuously, calling Lighthizer and Navarro out on their process foul. Since March 22, when he had spelled out the rules in a three-page memo, Priebus had required formal paperwork for presidential meetings and decisions. The memo said in bold,“Decisions are not final—and therefore may not be implemented—until the staff secretary files a vetted decision memorandum signed by the President.” Knowing how the Trump White House worked, the memo also said in bold, “On-the-fly decisions are strictly provisional.”