WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday (Nov 26) selected commerce lawyer Jamieson Greer as his new US commerce consultant, elevating a key veteran of his first-term commerce conflict in opposition to China to execute a sweeping tariff agenda that guarantees to upend world commerce.
“Jamieson will focus the Workplace of the US Commerce Consultant on reining within the Nation’s huge Commerce Deficit, defending American Manufacturing, Agriculture, and Providers, and opening up Export Markets in every single place,” Trump mentioned in an announcement.
Greer, 44, served as chief of workers to Trump’s former US commerce consultant, Robert Lighthizer, the architect of Trump’s unique tariffs on some US$370 billion value of Chinese language imports and the renegotiation of the North American free commerce cope with Canada and Mexico.
On this function, Greer participated with Lighthizer in all negotiations with Chinese language officers by way of the signing of a “Section 1” commerce cope with Beijing in January 2020. Underneath that settlement, China pledged to purchase some US$200 billion value of US items over two years, a aim by no means achieved, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Greer, who beforehand labored with Lighthizer on the regulation agency Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, on metal commerce treatment circumstances, left USTR in Might 2020 to affix the King & Spalding regulation agency in Washington. There, he has represented purchasers together with home producers in commerce treatment circumstances, export and import compliance and funding safety issues.
Lighthizer known as Greer an “glorious alternative” for USTR.
“He is aware of the regulation and has nice judgment. He works across the clock and he agrees with and is loyal to the president,” Lighthizer mentioned in an emailed assertion. Greer “has spent many years making ready for this chance to guide the commerce subject for the following 4 years.”
Trump had beforehand named Wall Road CEO Howard Lutnick to guide his commerce technique as head of the Commerce Division, together with “direct accountability” for USTR.
