TARIFFS: USTR Greer To House Ways And Means Ctte Underway Shortly

United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer's testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee is set to get underway shortly. LIVESTREAM

• Yesterday, in his corresponding Senate hearing on the Trump administration's trade agenda, Greer signalled that the goal of the administration’s tariff policy is to negotiate a new series of trade deals.
• Axios notes that Greer said the tariffs are “both” a short-term negotiating tool and a long-term punitive measure. He also declined to call the tariff escalation a trade war, since “most countries have said they’re not going to retaliate.”
• Greer added that if countries present solutions for shifting the dynamic, the message to them is "we want to negotiate with you," per NPR.
• Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), told Greer yesterday: “...Trump and his advisers have yet to provide an understandable explanation – any explanation – for what his tax hike on the American people is supposed to accomplish.”
• Senator Todd Young (R-ID) said: “...trade retaliation doesn’t fall on everyone evenly. It has a different impact on a New York tech firm than it might have on a Hoosier soy bean farmer. … In Indiana, rural communities and export-driven manufacturers oftentimes feel the consequences and they feel the consequences first.”
• If there is going to be a concerted move by Congress to rein in Trump’s authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, it is likely to come from farm and manufacturing state Republicans like Young.