President Donald Trump’s tariff-policy defeat in the U.S. Supreme Court won’t unravel individual deals the administration has sealed with its trading partners, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said.
Those deals, which the administration made with China, the European Union, South Korea and others, remain in place, Greer said on February 22, on CBS’s Face the Nation. He sought to separate those arrangements from the planned 15% global tariff Trump announced February 21.
“We want them to understand these deals are going to be good deals,” Greer said. “We’re going to stand by them. We expect our partners to stand by them.”
The high court ruling that struck down Trump’s use of emergency authority to wield tariffs preceded the president’s planned trip in March to China. Greer suggested that alternative U.S. trade tools, including those involving investigations of other countries’ trade practices, would give the U.S. leverage.
“We have tariffs like this already in place on China, we have open investigations already,” he said.
Trump is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit starting March 31.
“The president and Xi have a strong relationship,” Greer told Fox News Sunday, noting the U.S. maintains an average tariff of 40% on China without using the emergency law struck down by the court.
Trump’s approach to trade, largely nullified by the Supreme Court, nevertheless has riled U.S. trading partners worldwide, including the European Union.
The European Parliament’s trade chief said on February 22 he’ll propose freezing the EU’s ratification process of the trade deal with the U.S. until they’ve received details from the Trump administration on its trade policy.
Greer said he “spoke with my counterpart from the EU this weekend” and would be talking with officials of other key U.S. trading partners to reassure them.
“Rest assured, I’ve been speaking to these folks as well,” Greer told CBS. “I’ve been telling them for a year — whether we won or lost we were going to have tariffs, the president’s policy was going to continue.
“That’s why they signed these deals even while the litigation was pending,” he said.