(Feb 7): President Donald Trump’s nominee for US trade representative is telling lawmakers he would seek to restore the nation’s “hard power” by using trade policy to revitalise manufacturing and counter “global volatility”.

“If the United States does not have a robust manufacturing base and innovation economy, it will have little in the way of hard power to deter conflict and protect Americans,” Jamieson Greer said at his confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee. “Trade policy can play an important role in ensuring that we have the economic security that leads to strong national security.”

But Greer received a sharp challenge from Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s top Democrat, who criticised Trump for vowing new tariffs on Canada and Mexico only to back down.

“America had its first taste of Trump’s rancid trade policy this week,” Wyden said in his opening remarks. “Trump governs by whim, and in trade that hurts American families. His tariff bluff created huge uncertainty that is costing American businesses and putting the global economy on a month-to-month lease.”

Greer, a partner in international trade at King & Spalding, served as chief of staff to Trump’s trade representative Robert Lighthizer in the president’s previous term. In that role, he worked on the so-called Phase One trade deal with China and helped with renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Greer may compete for standing in the Trump administration with the president’s nominee for commerce secretary, Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick, who Trump has said will oversee the trade representative’s office, and with Peter Navarro, who Trump named as his senior counselor on trade and manufacturing.

But Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, the committee’s Republican chairman, underscored that by law the trade representative reports directly to the president. And Wyden said “my top priority today is to figure out who the hell in Trump’s administration is going to be in charge of trade, what they plan to do and how this sort of bedlam is supposed to do a damn thing for American families.”

Greer’s confirmation would help cement the place in power of a new protectionist generation of trade thinkers within the Republican Party born out of Trump’s trade wars.

Lighthizer was confirmed in May 2017 with a vote of 82 to 14 with three Republicans voting against him. None of those Republicans — Cory Gardner, John McCain and Ben Sasse — remain in Congress. McCain, who died in 2018, and Sasse said they would oppose Lighthizer’s nomination due to his protectionist rhetoric and concerns over the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement that later produced the USMCA.

Greer is unlikely to meet similar opposition. Republicans have been moving in lockstep to confirm Trump’s nominees, and both parties have moved toward a more protectionist agenda on trade.

“It is critical for our economic and national security that our supply chains are resilient,” Greer said, saying that the US has a “relatively short window of time” to reorient the global trading system. 

Uploaded by Felyx Teoh