Someone asked him that question at a recent event and here's what he said (starts around 45:30)
Q: “Are you a protectionist?”
A: “Well, you see, that’s interesting. So, what actually does that mean? That’s why when I started out I sort of said, and gave you, the history. The idea of the protectionist, originally the idea was, that you have a certain tariff, whatever that is, and that’s the tariff you need to support your government. And then, if you want to add tariffs on top, take care of a specific industry, then that would be a protectionist tariff. That was kind of the debate, and people would come in and say, ‘no, no, no, we want tariffs, but not protectionist tariffs’. And there were abuses in that, because people would use political power and this and that, and defend various industries, some of which deserved defending and some of which didn’t. But if you ask – I mean, the term has become sort of pejorative now – if you asked every Republican president from Abraham Lincoln until probably up to Eisenhower, ‘are you a protectionist?’ they would say, ‘yes, I am protectionist’. In other words, they ran for election, in part – there were a lot of other things going on, wars and all kinds of things – but they ran in part on this American system that I mentioned before, the American system. They ran saying we’re going to develop jobs and work for American people, middle-class people, and we’re going to do it using one of the tools – tariffs. Was that a protectionist? I don’t know. I’m certainly not a free trader, and so if the opposite of free trader is protectionist, then I am a protectionist. But for me it’s more complicated than that. But no one would accuse me of being a free trader, and that I can guarantee ‘em.”
I think there's a continuum here, and even Lighthizer would not want to keep out all imports. It might be difficult to elicit the specific degree of protectionism someone supports, but maybe asking something like, "Can you give some examples of sectors where you support tariffs, and what tariff levels you would prefer?" Or: "In what sectors would your raise tariffs above existing levels?"
In general terms, though, if the question is, "Do you think tariffs can be used to limit imports and thereby make the U.S. economy better off?", then I think it is fair to say he thinks the answer is yes in many cases, and in that sense he is a protectionist. The comments are open if he wants to weigh in himself!
