Jamieson Greer had his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.
President Trump’s pick to be the nation’s top trade negotiator told members of the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday that he’s mindful “of the struggles Americans face when they’re cut out of economic growth and trade plays a role in those concerns.”
“I’m grateful to be considered for this position and I look forward to building on the historic work accomplished on trade in President Trump’s first term. Notably, nearly all of that good work was kept in place during the Biden administration and even expanded upon,” said Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s nominee for United States Trade Representative. “For example, President Biden kept President Trump’s tariffs on China and increased them in a handful of critical areas, such as vehicles, steel and semiconductors.”
Greer promised a similarly forceful approach to trade policy in defense of domestic industry and promised to “develop and implement trade policies that incentivize good paying jobs for American workers and allow them to support their families and communities.”
The nominee then proceeded to answer senators’ questions for three hours. He covered a lot of ground!
Greer discussed the longtime issue of dumped Chinese products, noting that President Trump directed in his Day One trade memo to explore improving anti-dumping laws.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) brought up China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status, which in 2000 granted China access to the U.S. market and coincided with a steep decline in U.S. manufacturing employment. Greer called it “a major cause,” and noted Trump’s memo directed it be reconsidered too.
Greer defended the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs in place since 2018. “We have to have a steel and aluminum industry,” Greer said. “We simply have to. And it does require protection because of all the overcapacity in the world.”
Greer was asked by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) about his priorities in the USMCA trade deal review scheduled for 2026, and singled out rules of origin for automobiles and aerospace products. He also said he’d protect and improve its “ambitious” chapter on labor rights.
In response to a question about de minimis rules, which allow packages valued at $800 or less to be imported duty free, he said we need to ensure it “isn’t a loophole that’s being used for tariff evasion, counterfeits, fentanyl, or simply to explode the trade deficit.” AAM has long called for de minimis reform.
And Greer linked other questions about new market access to the idea of reciprocity. “When you look at our largest trading partners, they’re our largest trading partners because we import so much from them,” he said.
Jamieson Greer is a veteran of trade policy, having served as chief of staff to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during the first Trump administration. He told the committee that decades of liberalized U.S. trade policy had left a “relatively short window of time” to restructure the modern international trade system to better serve U.S. interests. But he told the committee he’s got a lot of faith in the American workforce.
“It is my belief that America should be a country of producers,” he said. “We are more than just what we consume. And Americans should have the opportunity to work in good paying jobs producing goods and services they can sell in this market and aboard to earn an honest living.”