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Greer Testifies Before the House Ways and Means Committee on the 2025 Trade Policy Agenda

April 9, 2025 · Ways and Means Committee Republicans · 4:30:16

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

The House Committee on Ways and Means held its full-committee hearing on “the Trump Administration’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda” on April 9, 2025, with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer as the sole witness, one week after the President’s April 2 reciprocal tariff announcement. Chairman Jason Smith opened by arguing the tariffs answered long-standing foreign barriers — Thailand’s 50 percent tariff on U.S. beef and Japan’s 700 percent tariff on U.S. rice, as he stated them — and said nearly 70 nations had already come to the table asking to reset the trading relationship.

Greer told the committee that more than 75 nations had reached out to discuss removing market barriers, and that he had met the day before with trade representatives from Mexico, Ecuador, the European Union, and South Korea. Asked by Chairman Smith whether there is a serious trade problem in EU agriculture, Greer answered: “Yes, Chairman, it’s fundamentally unfair. It’s structurally unfair. It has been for decades.” He committed to protecting American digital trade against foreign discrimination, warned that “it’s important that Canada and Mexico not be used as an export platform for third countries” ahead of the 2026 USMCA review, and said pharmaceutical production must be reshored: “We have to do it now. We can’t wait for the next crisis.” During the hearing itself, news broke that the President was pausing the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days; Representative Steven Horsford pressed Greer on whether he had known the pause was under discussion, and Greer replied that he typically does not divulge the contents of his discussions, an exchange Horsford called “amateur hour.” Committee Democrats, among them Representative Brad Schneider, charged that the tariff rollout had destroyed more than $10 trillion in market value, citing the Wall Street Journal editorial board’s description of “the dumbest trade war in history” — criticism Greer answered by pointing to the negotiations the tariffs had set in motion.

Why it matters

This is Greer’s fullest early statement of the administration’s trade method in his own words: tariffs as leverage to force open foreign markets, with the 90-day pause as the negotiating window. Greer is the cabinet-level official who runs those negotiations day to day, and the claims he made here — 75-plus nations seeking talks, near-term reciprocal agreements to follow — are the dated benchmarks his USTR record is measured against.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: Greer’s April 9, 2025 testimony that more than 75 nations had reached out to reset trade terms and that near-term reciprocal agreements would follow during the 90-day pause — as stated at the hearing, to be checked against the agreements USTR subsequently announced.

Sources: House Committee on Ways and Means, “Hearing on the Trump Administration’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda with Ambassador Jamieson Greer,” April 9, 2025 (committee’s official upload, embedded above); House Ways and Means Committee, “Seven Key Moments,” April 11, 2025; Washington International Trade Association, “Ambassador Jamieson Greer’s Testimonies on the President’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda,” April 2025. All figures and characterizations as stated by Ambassador Greer and committee members at the hearing.