Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of the US Trade Representative indicated he would try to revive Washington’s phase-one trade deal with Beijing to ensure “fair” market access for American producers.
If confirmed by the US Senate, Jamieson Greer also pledged to review the duty-free handling of smaller parcels entering the US from China and “restructure” the international trading system to better serve American interests.
Citing the American president’s recent directive to the USTR to review China’s compliance with the 2020 pact, Greer said he “would expect to very quickly assess the results of that compliance review and very quickly go about enforcing compliance”.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
Greer at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday described the agreement meant to address the two economies’ trade deficit as “of critical importance” for the countries to do business.
Under the deal, China committed to buying at least US$502.4 billion of US goods over a two-year period. However, after Trump left office in 2020 and China failed to buy enough goods, the deal fell apart under his successor, Joe Biden.
Greer was involved in the deal’s negotiations when he worked in the first Trump administration under Robert Lighthizer, then America’s top trade envoy. The career lawyer also worked on the implementation of US tariffs on more than US$300 billion worth of mainland imports in 2018.
On Thursday, Greer said “a healthy economic relationship” would be possible with China if it was “premised on fair market access for our exporters and producers”.
His comments came in response to US senator Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, who said the US was “falling behind” when it came to exploring market access with countries like China, the world’s largest beef market.
“We must not forget that despite all the challenges we face with China today ... there’s a lot of opportunity for growth for our [agriculture] producers to get access to that important market,” Daines added.
Last week, Trump signed an executive order imposing a 10 per cent tariff on all Chinese imports, invoking his emergency powers in the name of fighting America’s drug crisis and illegal immigration.
The American president also announced 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but the levies were suspended for 30 days after the countries assured the US they would do more to help the US stem the inflows of illegal drugs and undocumented migrants.
For its part, Beijing responded with retaliatory measures – including new tariffs between 10 and 15 per cent on US liquefied natural gas, coal, farm machinery and other products – set to take effect on Monday.
Separately, China formally sued the US at the World Trade Organization on Wednesday, calling the US tariffs a “serious violation” of international norms.
Greer on Thursday intimated that the US had a “relatively short window of time to restructure the international trading system to better serve US interests”.
He testified that “bodies like the World Trade Organization” are presumed to “exercise sovereignty or authority over our trade laws and limit our ability to that”.
“We need to restructure this,” Greer told the senators. “We need to have a pragmatic trade policy where we’re looking sometimes sector by sector, sometimes economy-wide, often on a bilateral basis ... as opposed to just having a default trade policy of what’s liberalised everything and see where the chips fall.”
Greer further expressed an intent to collaborate with the US Congress on reconsidering China’s permanent normal trade relations status, saying the granting of that status had fed the imbalance.
He would seek “to make sure that we’re not dependent on China for strategic goods, that our farmers aren’t so dependent on them that they can be victims of economic coercion”.
Asked about the de minimis programme allowing e-commerce companies like Shein and Temu to send billions of dollars of products from mainland factories directly to US consumers without being taxed, Greer suggested it was more than just a “loophole”.
“There are issues around that, related to inspection, informal entry, where I think we need to be very careful that this is not a loophole that’s being used for tariff evasion,” he said.
Trump’s executive order last week led to some confusion as the US temporarily stopped accepting de minimis parcels from mainland China and Hong Kong. On Tuesday the United States Postal Service reversed course and allowed them in.
“The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery,” the Postal Service said in a statement.
Amid the latest turn in the US-China trade and heightened tensions with Canada and Mexico, lawmakers grilled Greer on the use of trade policy to address non-trade issues like immigration and illegal drugs.
In Trump’s first term, Greer also took part in the USTR’s efforts to negotiate approval for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a free-trade deal that Trump now wants to renegotiate.
Greer told US senator Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, that he believed Trump made proper use of congressionally extended authority to deal with national emergencies in ordering the latest tariffs.
Some US senators on Thursday spoke of concerns voiced by American farmers and small-business owners in their home states on losing consumer markets like China, Mexico and Canada.
“I don’t know anybody in this room, or any of my colleagues, that doesn’t want to fight the war on fentanyl. It’s impacting all of our communities and there’s a way to go about it,” said US senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat.
Cortez Masto described America’s fentanyl crisis as a concern during the first Trump administration, saying “he didn’t take this action. So there’s a way to be smart about that that is not also continuing to harm our communities with job loss and billions of dollars of income coming in in the travel community”.
In response, Greer said “the president knows how to shepherd the economy. He knows how to balance these things. And I think that we need to stay the course when it comes to fentanyl, when it comes to redoing trade policy”.
That did little to persuade Cortez Masto, whose state relies heavily on foreign tourism. She said small businesses in Nevada were complaining about business losses arising from tariffs.
“So I just have to tell them, you’re just going to be, unfortunately, a victim of the trade war,” she added. “Suck it up. It’s better for the country. It’s better for everyone else”.
More from South China Morning Post:
- China’s cross-border merchants mull price hikes to offset US tariffs, shipping fees
- How is China retaliating against US tariffs, and what impact will it have?
- China’s trade moves against US show it’s ready to fight back but willing to make a deal
- ‘De minimis’ exemption: US tariff move ‘will not kill’ Chinese e-commerce, analysts say
- Trump signs executive orders imposing steep tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico
For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2025.
