Jamieson Greer

Jamieson Greer, a corporate lobbyist and international trade attorney, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Greer previously served as Chief of Staff to Trump’s USTR Robert Lighthizer, played a pivotal role in shaping and implementing Trump’s aggressive trade policies, including renegotiating the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Per his USCC submitted biography, Greer was also “deeply involved in the Administration’s implementation of tariffs on China,” measures that targeted $350 billion worth of imports. ” In a speech at Sciences Po in 2022, Greer outlined his view that the Chinese Communist Party poses an existential threat to Western values, declaring, “For decades, U.S. policy was rooted in the belief that support for China’s rise…would liberalize China. Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others.” Greer argued that tariffs, export controls, and investment restrictions are necessary tools to “impose costs on the Chinese Communist Party” and to counter its “unfair trading practices” such as subsidies, forced technology transfer, and economic coercion.

As a corporate lobbyist, Greer has represented WebuildUS, a subsidiary of an Italian construction firm, involved, by way of its $4.7 billion contract, in Saudi Arabia’s Neom project, which faces allegations of 21,000 migrant worker deaths. Disclosures reveal that Greer lobbied Congress and the USTR on “Investment Arbitration Enforcement” issues for WebuildUS, while King & Spalding’s broader client list includes pharmaceutical, energy, and defense companies.

The 2024 American Compass report Disfavored Nation credits Greer for “sharing [his] perspectives.” American Compass is a new-right think tank with work co-authored by Vice President elect J.D. Vance, Trump Secretary of State nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio, and new-right economics contributor, Oren Cass, a Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership “Contributor” and an expressly credited contributor in the Department of Labor chapter. American Compass’s Disfavored Nation calls for rescinding China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status and creating a new tariff schedule (Column 3) targeting Chinese goods. The report proposes a 25% tariff on non-strategic goods and a 100% tariff on strategic goods, including semiconductors, rare earth minerals, and lithium-ion batteries, with the aim of “radically reducing U.S. dependence on Chinese supply chains.” The report also recommends extending these tariffs to goods produced by Chinese-owned companies globally, regardless of their manufacturing location.

Greer’s nomination reflects Trump’s alignment with the Project 2025’s calls for staffing positions like USTR with ideologically aligned personnel: “The lessons of the Nixon, Reagan, and Trump Administrations teach us that ‘personnel is policy’ or, in this case, that ‘bad personnel will mean bad trade policy.’” Mandate for Leadership praises Lighthizer for rejecting the Republican Party’s globalist trade orthodoxy and urges the appointment of individuals with a “firm commitment” to protectionist trade policies. Greer’s fixation with punitive anti-Chinese trade policies align with both Project 2025’s hawkish agenda (e.g. restricting U.S. investment in Chinese assets) and with Trump’s campaign platform, Agenda 47. Under Trump’s Agenda 47 trade plan, Greer is poised to lead the implementation of universal baseline tariffs on most foreign products, a cornerstone of Trump’s pledge to replace the “Biden system of punishing domestic producers and rewarding outsourcers.” Trump’s plan calls for tariffs to increase incrementally for countries engaging in currency manipulation or trade violations, with revenues from these tariffs intended to fund tax cuts for American workers and businesses. Trump’s agenda also emphasizes revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status and implementing a four-year plan to phase out Chinese imports of essential goods, including electronics, steel, and pharmaceuticals. Greer’s background in enforcing Section 301 tariffs and promoting economic decoupling positions him as the likely architect of these sweeping trade measures.

Greer will likely also oversee efforts to prevent circumvention of trade restrictions through “conduit countries” and to restrict U.S. companies from investing in China. Greer has supported using trade policy as a geopolitical tool to achieve broader political goals. Trump’s recently announced tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China—framed as measures to address illegal immigration and drug trafficking—align with Greer’s strategy of leveraging trade policy to achieve national security objectives. In his speech at Sciences Po, Greer argued that the U.S. and Europe must adopt “coordinated measures” to “depriv[e] China of access to the trading and capital markets of the West,” stating that dialogue alone is insufficient without enforcement actions such as sanctions and tariffs. Trump’s Agenda 47 plan calls for banning federal contracts for companies that outsource to China and for implementing protections to “completely eliminate dependence on China.” Greer’s leadership will align with Trump’s stated goal of “revitalizing American manufacturing” through tariffs designed to create domestic incentives while penalizing foreign producers. These measures reflect a broader strategy of using trade policy to reshape global economic relationships in favor of American industries and workers. Big Agriculture groups express some concern with potentially anti-China trade policies, with the Iowa Soybean Association stating, “China is the largest export market for U.S. soybeans and accounts for more U.S. exports than all other trading partners combined.” and “It is critical to maintain existing global markets for soybeans, as well as to expand markets through finalizing and reaching new free trade agreements – including maintaining U.S. soy’s market share in China. U.S. soybean farmers need certainty that they will maintain market access in China.” The Iowa Soybean Association also cautioned that the Trump administration’s “2018 trade war resulted in more than $27 billion in losses for U.S. agriculture, with soybeans facing the most significant setbacks.”