Tariff Access Is Becoming a Supply-Chain Security Test

Jamieson Greer does not describe tariffs as temporary leverage meant to restore the earlier trading system. He describes a preferred structure in which terms of access to the U.S. market vary according to where production occurs, how closely a supply chain is tied to China, and the trade challenges the United States sees with a partner.

For companies, the implication of his remarks is direct: waiting for a return to a system in which a factory in China or Vietnam can serve the U.S. market on roughly the old terms is not a strategy Greer expects to reward. He distinguishes that from a more sympathetic demand for certainty about tariff rates. Companies investing heavily in a factory, he says, need to know what rate they will face; what they should not expect is a return to the pre-tariff status quo.

Before the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the administration’s IEEPA tariffs, Greer says, the emerging arrangement resembled “concentric circles” around the United States. The Western Hemisphere generally received the most favorable treatment; allies with whom the United States still had trade disputes occupied a middle tier; South and Southeast Asia faced higher rates; and China bore the highest tariff burden.

Greer presents that hierarchy as a way to influence investment and sourcing choices, rather than simply to collect duties. His preferred endpoint is a tariff system legible enough for firms to plan around while directing more supply chains toward the United States, North America, and countries less exposed to Chinese industrial and geopolitical risk.

The legal route to that arrangement remains unsettled. Greer says the administration had reached a relatively intelligible tariff map before the IEEPA ruling, but is now proceeding through country-by-country Section 301 investigations. Those investigations seek to identify practices USTR considers unfair—including tolerance of forced labor, structural excess capacity, and other sources of nonreciprocity—and may yield new actions. He says additional investigations may be opened.

The domestic rationale rests on three measures Greer has identified for U.S. trade policy: reducing the trade deficit, raising wages, and increasing manufacturing’s share of the economy. American producers cannot be expected to sustain high wages, he argues, when competing with imports priced through industrial subsidies, export-oriented subsidies, or lower foreign labor and environmental standards. Anti-dumping duties can address particular cases, but Greer’s concern is broader: foreign systems that shape prices and production before U.S. firms enter the contest.

When Anja Manuel asks whether tariffs are the best instrument for lifting wages, Greer calls them one tool among several. Competitive energy prices, tax policy, and expensing for R&D and capital investment also matter, he says. But in his account, domestic measures alone cannot resolve the problem if U.S. production remains exposed to imports supported by foreign state policy or regulatory arbitrage.

The manufacturing objective is about capacity as much as employment. Greer puts manufacturing at about 9.5% of U.S. GDP, compared with roughly 15% to 16% for the average developed OECD economy.

He expects a larger manufacturing share to create more factory jobs, but not in a one-for-one relationship with output. The factories he has visited, he says, are using AI and other technologies to make workers more productive while also hiring. The aim is not necessarily to reproduce the employment structure of an earlier industrial era; it is to increase domestic production of physical goods, even where output grows faster than headcount.

Services sit differently within this framework. Greer says the United States already has an advantage in services and digital business, so the task is to preserve it through national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment, and resistance to foreign fees, fines, and restrictions on U.S. technology business models. Manufacturing, by contrast, is “existential” because the United States has lost an edge it now needs to regain.

When Steve Clemons asks whether tariffs imposed for political or diplomatic reasons can undermine a coherent industrial strategy, Greer agrees that economic policy should focus on economics. But he says it is increasingly difficult to divorce economics from a country’s broader posture toward the United States. He characterizes the administration’s approach as iterative: testing authorities, learning what courts permit, and refining measures under Section 232 and Section 301. The stated aim is greater cohesion, even as the instruments remain under development.

Jamieson Greer begins from a judgment that negotiations cannot realistically induce China to remake its economic system. The United States has tried WTO integration, lengthy bilateral dialogues, and the first Trump administration’s Phase One agreement, he says. Those approaches may have produced particular commitments, but he no longer treats Chinese structural reform as a credible negotiating objective.

The alternative Greer describes is managed commercial coexistence. China should buy goods the United States wants to sell; the United States will continue to buy selected Chinese goods; tariffs will remain; and the countries will compete in high technology. The objective is not normalization, nor another attempt to persuade China to abandon what Greer calls a command-economy model. It is a bounded relationship in which trade continues where Washington considers it acceptable and is constrained where it challenges U.S. industrial capacity or security interests.

Agriculture illustrates the transactional model. China has targeted soybeans and other farm products in retaliation, Greer says. He rejects the proposition that the United States must accept unrestricted manufactured imports from China in order to preserve agricultural exports. Instead, he points to an arrangement under which China is to buy 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans annually. China had bought half a million tons in the preceding week, he says, even though U.S. soybeans were then priced above Brazilian beans. When Manuel asks whether China is meeting its commitment, he answers narrowly: “To that element of it, yes.”

The Section 301 investigation into structural excess capacity is meant to address a related problem. Greer describes excess capacity as industrial production built beyond what global demand or normal market mechanisms would justify. It displaces production abroad, leaves less room for American factories and workers, and can spill through third countries into the U.S. market, he argues.

He says the investigation is global rather than exclusively focused on China, though he identifies China as a major origin of the problem. USTR has held hearings and received public comments, and will take action if necessary. Greer declines to describe a prospective remedy while the investigation remains open.

The U.S.-China Board of Trade is intended to identify the remaining space for commerce, rather than recreate what Greer calls “fake dialogues.” The U.S. side is not a corporate advisory board, he says; it is Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Its practical task is to identify goods that can continue to trade because they are non-sensitive. Greer names agricultural goods, civil aircraft, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and lower-technology products. When Manuel suggests that this resembles a whitelist, Greer accepts the general direction without defining a formal list. He clarifies that aerospace means civilian aircraft, including Boeing planes, rather than sensitive aerospace technology.

Officials would therefore have to determine what is sensitive and what is not. Greer’s position is that trade which threatens the U.S. industrial base or involves security-relevant technology cannot be treated as ordinary commerce simply because buyers and sellers exist.

Greer says the United States is receiving rare earths from China and has something close to a supply-chain truce, though he does not give China an “A+” for performance. U.S. officials are monitoring and enforcing the arrangement, he says. His larger concern is China’s newer supply-chain rules, which he says could force countries to choose between the United States and China. Washington is not formally demanding that choice, Greer says, but it can respond if Chinese policy pushes the relationship in that direction.

Jamieson Greer presents economic security as a condition that should accompany trade access. The premise is a lesson he believes the past decade has made plain: some products, sectors, and supply chains are too important to leave entirely to market allocation or to offshore to the lowest-cost producer.

A country seeking to retain or improve access to the U.S. market should open its own market to American goods, Greer says. But it should also agree that its trade and investment relationship with the United States will strengthen, rather than undermine, U.S. national security—and, in Manuel’s formulation, ideally its own.

The concern is not limited to direct imports from China. A third country could obtain a favorable arrangement with the United States, accept investment from a country with structural excess capacity or hostile intent, and then become an export platform for U.S.-bound goods. Greer says partners need investment-screening systems capable of assessing the origin and purpose of manufacturing investment.

Export controls operate on the same principle. A partner receiving high-end U.S. technology should maintain controls that prevent diversion to countries that create security concerns. Government procurement is another component: U.S. firms should gain access to partners’ procurement markets, while critical infrastructure should not be opened to companies or countries that could create security problems.

The Saudi arrangement on AI chips is Greer’s clearest example. The United States wanted Saudi Arabia to operate within the American technology stack and wanted to be its preferred partner. But the arrangement also required U.S. company involvement, controls the United States considered appropriate, and the ability to monitor and enforce them. Manuel offers the analogous example of advanced chips sold to the United Arab Emirates subject to export controls related to China; Greer agrees that this captures the approach.

Greer says the United States has completed nine agreements on reciprocal trade. He describes them as substantive documents with annexes and commitments, rather than short political statements. In all nine, he says, USTR has sought economic-security commitments. He names Malaysia and Indonesia in Southeast Asia and Argentina and Ecuador in the Western Hemisphere as examples.

The agreements do not explicitly name China, Greer says, because Washington can have concerns about investment, diversion, or coercive supply-chain practices involving other countries as well. China nevertheless remains the central practical reference point in his explanation.

The approach has met more resistance from Japan, South Korea, and the European Union. Greer says these partners have raised sovereignty concerns. His answer is that trade agreements always involve reciprocal commitments that constrain discretion; sovereignty is not, in his view, sufficient grounds to reject conditions attached to U.S. market access.

That position creates a tension with alliance management. Anja Manuel argues that countries potentially useful to the United States on China and economic security felt mistreated by the administration’s Liberation Day tariffs. Greer does not offer tariff exemptions in exchange for cooperation. He says those countries did not show comparable concern when U.S. manufacturing moved offshore, and that Washington should not have to compensate partners for taking measures that are already in their own interests.

His skepticism extends to European coordination on China. Greer recalls European representatives responding to U.S. concerns about Chinese IP theft and industrial losses by proposing to “out-innovate” China. European automotive producers are now under pressure, he says, but he does not believe Europe has yet adopted a sufficiently substantial response.

The implication of Greer’s approach is not that Washington has abandoned allies. It is that alignment on economic security is something U.S. partners should demonstrate through their own controls, investment rules, and supply-chain decisions—not an alternative to U.S. tariffs or a veto over them.

Jamieson Greer describes USMCA’s built-in review procedure as one of its central improvements over NAFTA. Earlier agreements lacked a forcing mechanism for Washington to reconsider their consequences, he says. NAFTA became politically unsustainable in part because it had never been updated. USMCA was designed to require reassessment; Greer presents the current review as an opportunity to address deficits, rules of origin, and the location of North American production.

Manuel frames her question by saying that the United States had announced it would not renew USMCA in its current trilateral form and would pursue bilateral talks with Mexico and Canada. Greer does not directly confirm that premise. His response focuses instead on what the review should accomplish, particularly with Mexico.

Mexico is the more developed case in his account. Greer says the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico continued to rise after USMCA took effect. One reason, he argues, is that tariffs on China encouraged companies to shift production to Mexico. Trade behaves like a balloon: squeeze it in one place without sufficient controls and it expands somewhere else.

Higher external tariff rates, including Section 232 measures, make compliance with USMCA rules more valuable because firms can still obtain preferential treatment—but only if they satisfy the agreement’s requirements. Greer wants those requirements strengthened.

First is the question of origin. USMCA already tightened auto rules, requiring more regional content in exchange for preferential tariff treatment. Greer says those rules may need to become more stringent and extend to electronics, pharmaceuticals, and other industrial goods. The goal is not merely to route products through North America, but to establish production with more regional content and less content from Asia.

Second is the relationship between complementary production and domestic capacity. Greer says the United States is working with Mexico to identify sectors that can be reshored to North America: production that can expand in the United States, supported by Mexican production that fits within a more balanced regional system.

Third is the bilateral deficit itself. Greer treats it as an objective in its own right, not simply as evidence of transshipment or weak rules of origin. A persistent structural deficit, he says, reflects problems in the global trading system, including overcapacity, subsidies, unfair trading practices, and monetary-policy effects.

The preferred model, as Greer describes it, is more manufacturing in the United States, Mexican production that complements rather than substitutes for it, and a more balanced trade relationship. He says President Trump has directed him to find a way—through tariffs, quotas, or other mechanisms—to control the Mexican deficit without unnecessarily disrupting supply chains.

Mexico has been pragmatic, Greer says, and negotiations are going well, though he declines to provide details. Canada receives a less favorable assessment. Greer says he speaks with Canadian counterparts weekly and has offered proposals that could improve the relationship immediately, but he has not seen substantial movement.

Canada’s rollback of a proposed digital-services tax and an online-streaming measure that would have required American companies to fund Canadian firms were welcome, he says. But Greer does not regard reversing a harmful measure as a concession for which Canada deserves special credit.

He says the trade deficit with Canada is down 25%, but offers no timetable for an agreement. If President Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney reach an understanding, Greer says, negotiators could produce an arrangement that gets the countries “over the hump.” His objective is not to end trade with Canada; it is to bring more supply chains into the United States while continuing commerce with a neighboring economy.

North American policy, in Greer’s formulation, follows the broader logic of his trade agenda: preferential access should reward genuine regional content, discourage China-linked circumvention, and direct more investment toward the United States. What remains unresolved in his remarks is the institutional form through which the United States will pursue those goals with Mexico and Canada.