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Greer Defends the 2025 Trade Policy Agenda Before Senate Finance, Apr. 8, 2025

April 8, 2025 · CNBC Television · 2:44:00

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What happened

United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer testified on April 8, 2025, before the Senate Committee on Finance at its hearing on “The President’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda,” carried in full by CNBC Television — six days after the President’s April 2 reciprocal-tariff announcement and the night before the higher rates took effect. Greer told the committee the administration would not change tactics in the near term and warned that some pain for businesses would be necessary to bring home manufacturing jobs, as Reuters reported from the hearing. The higher across-the-board rates on 57 trading partners, from the European Union to China and Brazil, would go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, on top of the 10% tariff already imposed on all other countries. “The president has been clear, again, that he’s not doing exemptions or exceptions in the near term,” Greer said; past carveouts, he said, created a “Swiss cheese” approach full of holes that failed to slow the $1.2 trillion U.S. trade deficit.

On the negotiations, Greer said the administration was talking with more than 50 countries, and that to gain relief trading partners would need to lower their tariff and non-tariff barriers; his written testimony, as Reuters reported it, named Argentina, Vietnam, and Israel as countries that had suggested they would reduce their tariffs and barriers. China had retaliated, prompting escalation of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods to 104% since the President took office: “Other countries have signaled that they’d like to find a path toward reciprocity. China has not said that and we will see where that goes.” He declined to give a timeline for the talks — USTR and other countries were working quickly, including nights and weekends — and repeated the framing of his prepared remarks: a goods trade deficit that hit a record $1.2 trillion in 2024, 5 million manufacturing jobs and 90,000 factories lost since 1994, and, as he put it, “The trade deficit has been decades in the making and it’s not going to be solved overnight.” The skepticism was bipartisan: Senator Ron Wyden demanded, “What is the plan?”; Senator Thom Tillis, normally an administration ally, asked, “What I want to know is, whose throat do I choke if [the tariff policy] doesn’t work?” and added, “I wish you well, but I’m skeptical”; Senator Tina Smith asked whether tariffs were a negotiating tool or a revenue raiser, as contemporaneous reporting recorded.

Why it matters

This is the first full oversight record of the tariff program Greer runs — delivered mid-market-turmoil, hours before the reciprocal rates landed, with the no-exemptions line and the 50-plus-country negotiation claim both put under oath. Every trade agreement USTR announced afterward is the follow-through on this testimony, and the July 22, 2026 sequel hearing before the same committee is where senators measured it.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: Greer’s April 8, 2025 trade-agenda testimony — no near-term exemptions or exceptions, reciprocal rates effective April 9 as scheduled, negotiations with more than 50 countries, and his “not going to be solved overnight” timeline — each as stated at the hearing, to be checked against USTR’s subsequent agreements, pauses, and tariff changes.

Sources: Senate Committee on Finance, “The President’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda,” April 8, 2025 (full hearing as carried by CNBC Television, embedded above); Reuters, April 7–8, 2025, on Greer’s written testimony and his statements at the hearing; contemporaneous reporting of the Wyden, Tillis, and Smith exchanges. All figures and characterizations as stated by Ambassador Greer and committee members at the hearing.