Trump trade official defends tariffs against Australia despite US trade surplus

(CNN) –– President Donald Trump’s US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Tuesday defended the administration’s expansive tariffs, saying that its concerns would not be resolved overnight, and in at least one case, the tariffs were about “running up the score.”

Greer’s comments came during a routine hearing with the Senate Finance Committee, which happened in the wake of the stock market’s mass selloff triggered by Trump’s sweeping tariff plan. Starting Wednesday all countries’ goods will be subject to a minimum 10% tariff, with rates much higher for 60 countries the administration deems the “worst offenders” in terms of trade barriers.

Greer affirmed that those tariffs will go into effect on Wednesday and said that he’s not concerned with the stock market’s turmoil, which has amounted to trillions of dollars in market value wiped out in just a few days.

“I know everyone’s concerned about Wall Street. I’m just concerned about Main Street,” he said.

“Our large and persistent trade deficit has been over 30 years in the making, and it will not be resolved overnight,” Greer told the Senate Finance Committee during a routine hearing. “But all of this is in the right direction, particularly as we start to negotiate with these countries.”

Greer said the president’s “strategy is already bearing fruit” and that nearly “50 countries have approached me to discuss the President’s new policy and explore how to achieve reciprocity.” He added that “many” of them have signaled that they don’t plan to retaliate against the United States.

During the hearing Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Democratic ranking member of the committee, decried Trump’s sweeping tariffs and said he is introducing a new resolution “to end the latest crop of global tariffs that are clobbering American families and small businesses.”

“The Trump aimless, chaotic tariff spree has proven beyond a doubt that Congress has given far too much of our constitutional power on international trade over to the executive branch,” Wyden said. “It is time to take that power back.”

Non-trade barriers take the spotlight

Throughout the hearing, Greer pointed to the prominent role that so-called non-trade barriers are playing in Trump’s trade policy, one of them being foreign countries’ regulations that he said are rooted in “fake science.”

Greer told the committee that India has stringent restrictions around imports, which he claimed are based on “fake science” and are being used “to block our imports.” He also pointed to Australia having “barriers to the export of beef from the United States.”

American beef is not officially banned in Australia, but the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that none has been imported into the country since 2005.

“And it’s not just beef,” Greer said. “Australia also blocks on… fake science grounds the export of fresh and frozen US pork, so it’s incredible that they do this. We have zero exports of the fresh and frozen US pork to Australia.”

The US Department of Agriculture last year said that “the US has reestablished itself as Australia’s primary source of pork imports in the first half of 2024.”

In a contentious exchange with Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, Greer said that new tariffs on Australia are warranted despite the country having a $17.9 billion trade surplus with the US, as of 2024.

He said “that tariffs on Australia are necessary because “we’re addressing the $1.2 trillion deficit, the largest in human history that President Biden left us with, we should be running up the score in Australia.”

Australia and the US have a free trade agreement in place, but “despite the agreement, they ban our beef, they ban our pork,” Greer said.

Warner said that “the lack of trust from friends and allies based upon this ridiculous policy that goes into full effect at midnight tonight is extraordinary.”

Meanwhile, some Republicans, such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, praised the administration’s focus on addressing non-tariff barriers.

Several Democrats throughout the hearing mentioned the stock market’s decline after Trump announced his tariffs last week. Greer said he’s not concerned about that.

Stocks regained some ground Tuesday morning, after they plummeted in the prior three trading sessions. Those declines wiped out trillions in just a few days.

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