Lighthizer on Whether Tariffs are Going Anywhere after 2028

This is an exchange in a recent conversation between former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Gerald Butts of the Eurasia Group: 

Butts: And just to be clear about this, because I think it's a really important point, and this is one point we definitely agree on: No matter who is in the White House in 2028, these tariffs are going nowhere. In your view?

Lighthizer: ... nobody here has a grandchild in whose lifetime America is going to be free trade, right? It's just not going to happen.

(I assume Butts meant "after 2028" here).

Obviously, we've never had anything close to free trade before, so it's unlikely to happen after 2028 either. But putting that aside, there's an important question here about what happens to the various recent tariffs after Trump leaves office.

On this question, I would say that there is currently a lot of evidence being gathered on how well these tariffs – what Trump did with tariffs in his first term, the tariffs kept in place and sometimes expanded a bit by Biden, and Trump's tariff surge in the second term – have worked. So far, I don't think they are looking great, either for the specific objectives articulated by the Trump/Biden administrations or the overall impact on the economy, and it seems to me that politicians and policymakers who want to get us back to the more moderate system of protectionism that we had pre-Trump will have a pretty good case to make.