US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is in a good mood. “This is a job that goes up and down, but I’m on an up today”, he tells UnHerd in his first major interview with a European outlet, conducted just ahead of the news conference in which the US-UK trade deal was announced. And he leaves no doubt about how the long-sought arrangement came about: “Brexit liberates Britain to work with us in meaningful ways”.
Note well, though: it’s a trade agreement, not a free-trade deal. The difference means a lot to Greer, a lawyer who served as a senior aide to Robert Lighthizer, President Trump’s trade envoy during his first term and a ferocious critic of neoliberal globalisation. Having assumed his former boss’s job in the second term, Greer also channels his worldview.
“When people talk about a free-trade deal,” he tells me, “the objective is: ‘Let’s just liberalise as much as we can, as quickly as we can, and we’ll just see where the chips fall economically. And let’s be as expansive as possible in the things that we’re covering.’ And as you know, my view is different.” To Greer, trade is only worthwhile if it’s “reciprocal, fair, balanced, and contributes to the economic security of the United States”.
The new UK-US deal — an “agreement in principle”, he insists, not the final document — reflects this narrower account of trade. “We are being somewhat picky about areas where we want to increase trade or maintain trade.”
For starters, “we are essentially maintaining our tariffs as a general matter”, says Greer. That is, the Trump administration’s 10% levy will remain in place as a sort of default. However, “there are areas where the United Kingdom [has] had higher tariffs and barriers to our products, where they will bring those down. On our side, we will find appropriate accommodation, consistent with US economic and national security interests, on things like autos and steel, while protecting our own industries.”
But is there any pathway for Britain to escape the 10% tariff altogether? “The main thing for Britain”, he says, “is they have an opportunity to go into the economic-security fold of the United States”, particularly with respect to sectors that Washington otherwise considers security-sensitive, such as automotives, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors.
“Obviously,” he adds, “the British want to be able to take care of other sectors in their economy, etc. And there is a discussion to be had on that. But the nature of our national emergency” — persistently high, across-the-board trade deficits — “means that we need to be able to keep that 10%, and we expect that average tariff rates will remain high.”
Still, the agreement — the holy grail of UK politics for nearly a decade — was only made possible by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. “Brexit made it possible for the UK to do this,” Greer tells me. “Especially with respect to tariff levels. The UK now controls its own tariff levels and can make its own decisions about what it wants to protect and what it doesn’t.”
Likewise, on non-tariff barriers such as regulatory hassles, “the UK now has sovereignty over these matters.” Here, one sticking point — the bane of US, UK, and European negotiators for at least the past two decades — has to do with Europe’s more stringent standards on agricultural products, particularly animal protein. Were “chlorinated chickens” a difficulty during Greer’s discussions with his counterparts?
“The agreement — the holy grail of UK politics for nearly a decade — was only made possible by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.”
“They certainly came up,” he says, “because that’s where we suffer so many barriers to the UK market”. Avoiding directly answering the poultry question, Greer says Washington anticipates “an expanded quota for American beef”, “a reduced on duty on that quota for beef”, and “a reduced tariff for American ethanol”. As for agricultural sanitary questions, “with any country you have to comply with their import rules, but we’re very happy to have that conversation with them”.
The haggling around these and other issues wasn’t easy. “I work directly with Varun Chandra,” a special adviser to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, “and Johnny Reynolds”, Britain’s secretary of state for business and trade. “These folks were professional, dedicated, and very tough negotiators, but at the same time very committed” to the special alliance.
Negotiations with Brussels are likely to prove even hairier. When I ask Greer which other trade conversations are advancing productively, he mentions India, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Israel, Jordan, and the Philippines — but not the European Union. “It’s a variety of economies,” he notes. “The UK is the sixth largest economy in the world, India is one of the largest economies in the world; but also some smaller economies where it’s also important to make sure that American influence is felt and present.”
As for Brussels, “they have expressed an interest in negotiating”. The problem is that “they have philosophical, legal, and cultural aversion to what we’re doing. It can be very challenging. But I have a very friendly relationship with my counterpart there. And I believe that they are strongly interested in a deal. And we’re open to a way forward on that, too. But it’s not as advanced as [with] other economies.”
But if the deepest goal of the tariff regime is to contain China’s rise, and decouple the American economy from the Middle Kingdom’s, shouldn’t Washington take it easier on the Europeans, not least so they’re more likely to collaborate with the United States on issues like Taiwan? Greer disagrees.
“I would just frame that differently,” he says. “I know that that’s a very Washington thing to say. I know people say, ‘Oh, we’re just aligning everyone against China’. Fundamentally, this is less about tagging one certain foreign country or another. We have this problem of a giant trade deficit. Which has led … our manufacturing base being diminished, having a lack of working-class jobs, etc.”
Fundamentally, it is the erosion of America’s industrial base and working-class security that are Team Trump’s prime objectives. “Obviously, China is a big aspect of that”, he grants. “But we have other countries that send a lot of stuff, too, where they have a lot of over-capacity. So, when we’re looking at agreements, which are essentially modifications of our regime, we’re asking: Are they helping us address our emergency?”
The new accord with Britain meets these criteria: “We have this deal with the UK, where they’re clearly giving us more market access, and other national-security-related measures, we can find a good accommodation that will ensure that we have protected supply chains. Those are the kinds of outcomes we’re looking for. We’re not trying to create two blocs.”
As one of the chief architects of the “Liberation Day” tariffs, Greer has maintained a relatively low profile, even in the United States. Yet it isn’t Donald Trump who pores over detailed trade tables and the minutiae of agricultural standards — it is Greer. Has the stock-market reaction to his policy vision made him at least a little queasy?
Not really. “There are a lot of indicators to the economy”, he replies. “So, of course, we watch these indicators to see what effect [our policies are having]. We find that the markets sometimes are good indicators. Sometimes they overreact, sometimes they underreact.”
Short-term alarm or optimism on Wall Street isn’t the best guide, he insists. “Right now, you have all the so-called smart people saying, ‘Well, we’re not seeing the effects of the new trade policies on the numbers yet — but we will!’ But it goes both ways. The first couple of weeks, they went, ‘Oh, well, look at the markets — this means everything’s bad.’ And then we got a really good jobs report. The GDP number was a little funky, but not quite as bad as some people thought it was going to be.”
Bottom line: “We are in the middle of a process, and taking any one data point and projecting a policy over the next months or years, it’s a dangerous thing to do. We watch it, we have to assess the indicators, but they can fluctuate based on imperfect information.” The Trump administration, in other words, believes that the US economy has enough juice to weather the epochal transition they have put in motion. And individual trade deals like the one with Britain can reassure market actors along the way.
No wonder Greer’s having an “up” day.
