On U.S. Trade Policy with Jamieson Greer

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
You're listening to On the Record from the Council on Foreign Relations, bringing you select conversations from leading minds in foreign policy.

**Michael Froman** (0:14)
Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome. It's great to see you all here. In addition to the 120 or so in the room, we have about 300 members online, and we'll take questions from them as well when the time comes.
It's a great pleasure to welcome back to the Council Ambassador Jamieson Greer, who you all know as our 20th USTR. What does that make? I think, does that make me the 17th? I think that's right. That's 17th. I was previously Chief of Staff to Ambassador Bob Lighthizer during the President Trump's first term. He's been deeply involved in that administration, in the negotiations with China over the phase one agreement, and the negotiation of USMCA. And of course, in this administration, he's really been the point person in charge of everything trade.
You've been busy.

**Jamieson Greer** (1:05)
We've been busy. We have our hands full.

**Michael Froman** (1:08)
One of the things I loved about the job was that it combined the high diplomatic activity of engaging with heads of state over tariffs or non-tariff barriers, with getting a real granular understanding of the US economy. I'll never forget dairy farmers in Wisconsin teaching me the 500 things you can do with a molecule of milk to get around trade barriers in other countries.
Which part of the job do you like best, the domestic or dealing with the diplomacy?

**Jamieson Greer** (1:38)
Well, I would say I like, I'm a homer, right? I mean, America first. That's why we call it that. And I have been able to spend a lot of time domestically over the past few months, going to factories. Last Friday, I was at the Micron FAP in Manassas, where they just put an additional 2 billion. Got to go through the clean rooms, through the facilities, meet with the workers. And that is always really meaningful to me, right? I get to talk to these folks and I like to ask the workers, do you have family or friends working at the facility? And almost always they say yes, right?
My uncle worked the line before me, my sister-in-law is in the training department, different things, and it just drives home. That trade is not just, hey, we're seeking for efficiencies wherever we can get it, we're going to try to allocate capital, blah, blah, blah. It really drives home that these are people, these are families, and these are communities that are anchored by a lot of the economic activity that we're trying to accomplish here. So I enjoy working with my foreign counterparts and I feel like I have good relations with them, but I like going out to the field, as you might say.

**Michael Froman** (2:44)
Very diplomatic answer, clearly. You earned the title, Ambassador.

**Jamieson Greer** (2:48)
Yeah, the foreign officials, they're fine.

**Bruce** (2:50)
But it's really good.

**Michael Froman** (2:53)
You wrote in the FT, you talked about 2025 being the year of the tariff, and you laid out criteria of success, what the objectives of the tariff policy were. Reducing the trade deficit, raising wages for American workers, increasing manufacturing's share of the economy.
When we look at the data, and it's still only 16, 18 months into an administration, the trade deficit is down. It's down from $100 to $120 billion a month, to $60 to $80 billion a month, at least the goods deficit. Workers' wages, though, are also down, and manufacturing as a share of the economy is down slightly. How do you assess the success of the administration's policies? And if the answer is, not yet, we need more time, what's a reasonable timeline that we should be using to judge the administration's trade policy?

**Jamieson Greer** (3:48)
So on the deficit numbers, we're tracking that. On the workers' wages, I think we have a more nuanced view on some of that. I think if you look at the last month or two, it's not where we want it to be. But if you look overall, since the beginning of the Trump administration, if you look at manufacturing line workers, non-supervisory workers, those wages have gone up by over $1,000.
Comparative to the last administration over four years, net, they went down by $800. So we're looking all in. We're looking relative to where we were before. We've seen a lot of progress on wages, particularly in manufacturing, which is where we're quite focused. Again, we're looking at real wages. So we had good inflation trends. Obviously, with the Iran operations, energy has changed the inflation picture for the last couple of months. But that aside, real wages have outpaced inflation over the past year, the past two months being exceptional for reasons we all know. And then with manufacturing as a share of GDP, that's been about the same. It's been about 9.5% for some time. This is the one where I would say we need time.