On front lines of Trump’s impending trade war, an ‘unflappable’ Latter-day Saint

Days before formally taking office, President-elect Donald Trump is ruffling feathers globally by threatening “economic force” toward North American allies.

The responsibility of carrying out those promises will likely fall to a soft-spoken Latter-day Saint.

Jamieson Greer, Trump’s nominee to be U.S. trade representative, will, if confirmed, serve as Trump’s chief adviser and negotiator on international trade. A lawyer and an alumnus of Trump’s first administration, Greer steps into one of the most high-stakes positions in the incoming administration.

”This is a critical role,” said Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security adviser. “If you’re focused on trade and America First, it’s one of the three or four most important Cabinet positions.”

Trump has promised an ambitious trade agenda that would disrupt existing international agreements. Toward the U.S.’ three largest trading partners — Canada, China and Mexico — Trump vows to implement massive tariffs. All imports from Canada and Mexico will face a 25% tariff, Trump announced in November, in retaliation for the country’s “ridiculous Open Borders” and the flow of drugs and illegal migration. And goods from China will face “an additional 10% tariff, above any additional tariffs,” Trump declared. He previously threatened tariffs north of 60% on Chinese imports.

The threats have worried global leaders and economies. Some U.S. economists predict that Trump’s tariffs, along with his other economic plans, could severely worsen domestic inflation. In China, the yuan — the Chinese currency — reached a 16-month low this week. Leaders in Canada and Mexico have plotted their own trade retaliation should Trump follow through with tariffs.

Not all observers are convinced Trump will. “I don’t think that he will carry through,” said Jeff Flake, a former U.S. senator and U.S. ambassador to Turkey who now chairs the World Trade Center Utah. “I’m in the camp that believes that these will be negotiating tools, but that in the end we benefit significantly from the freest trade we can have, as long as there’s a level playing field.”

The task of negotiating with and extending diplomacy to trade partners will likely fall to Greer. A graduate of Brigham Young University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Greer, 44, is a partner on the International Trade team at King & Spalding, a firm with an office in Washington. During the first Trump term, Greer was chief of staff to Robert Lighthizer, then the U.S. trade representative.

Greer played a central role in many of Trump’s trademark trade actions, including negotiating the 2018 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and a series of tariffs on Chinese imports. Greer led diplomatic talks in 2018 to renegotiate the U.S.-South Korea free trade deal, known as KORUS, and shored up congressional support for the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement in 2019.

“Jameison was very popular as a chief of staff,” recalled David Boling, who served as a negotiator at the Office of the USTR under Lighthizer. “He treated staff really respectfully, and he was largely unflappable.”

Boling, who now oversees Japan and Asia trade at Eurasia Group, noted the first Trump term was a “really extraordinarily busy time” for global trade negotiation.

Under Lighthizer’s tutelage, Greer developed a reputation as a capable negotiator and effective communicator on trade policy. Greer worked alongside Lighthizer at an international trade-based law firm for several years, and Lighthizer recruited Greer to join the Trump administration in 2017. Lighthizer was fiery and demanding; Greer was “easy to work with” but “firm,” recalled Boling.

“I would submit that they were one of the dynamic duos in the first Trump administration,” said Aaron Cummings, former chief of staff for Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

But Lighthizer, widely recognized as the chief architect behind Trump’s first-term trade policy, is not expected to return to the administration. He was passed over for both the Commerce and Treasury secretary positions in favor of Wall Street executives, and confidantes told Politico they don’t believe he’d accept a lower role.

Lighthizer’s absence, and Trump’s picks for other Cabinet slots, raises questions about the expected chain of command on trade issues. When Trump announced Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO and co-chair of Trump’s transition team, as Commerce secretary nominee, Trump noted Lutnick “will lead our tariff and trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.” Meanwhile, Greer assured a top Senate Republican that he will report directly to the president, not to Lutnick, Politico reported.

Greer’s allies downplay the dissonance. “In the end, nobody thinks it’s going to be an issue,” Cummings, who attended law school with Greer, said. “The way I would kind of portray it is, this is a team of loyals with respect to trade policy, not so much a team of rivals. … Jamieson is going to have a leadership role there at USTR, but he’s going to work very, very closely with Lutnick and with and with (Treasury secretary nominee Scott) Bessent.”

Most importantly, Trump’s allies note, is that Greer, Lutnick and Bessent seem to be harmonized on Trump’s top trade foe: China. Greer has long accused China of implementing trade policies that disadvantage American workers and consumers, and he suggests tariffs can begin “remediating an unfair trade practice.”

“If you level out that playing field, it makes it so that Americans don’t have to compete unfairly,” Greer told The New York Times last year.

Last May, during a testimony before U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Greer argued “increased tariff usage” under Section 301 “should be on the table” to help the U.S. compete with China.

Flake, who as a senator frequently criticized Trump’s trade policy, acknowledged that Greer’s and Trump’s approach to China “is consistent with where most of the Congress is now.”

“I think all of us agree that China has not been an honest player in the trade framework,” Flake said. “China is going to have to realize that they’re going to have to change lot of what they’ve been doing.”

Flake has long expressed concern, however, that Congress is too willing to delegate authority to the president to regulate trade and impose tariffs. During Trump’s first term, he utilized federal code — like Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act — to justify widespread tariff imposition on the basis of national security.

As Trump retakes office, Congress — which has delegated much of its authority on regulating commerce to the president and to the U.S. trade representative — may not be an effective check on Trump’s power, Flake worries.

“I think that Congress has, I don’t know, come to terms or has resigned, I guess, to let the President lead on these things,” Flake said. “There was much more pushback with Trump 1.0. I don’t see as much pushback these days.”

Flake said he is “very happy” to see Greer as the nominee for USTR: “He’s a BYU grad, first and foremost,” Flake said, laughing. “That puts him up pretty high.”

Greer is the lone member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints nominated by Trump to a Cabinet-level position in this administration.

“I think Jamieson’s going to be flying the Latter-day Saint flag in the second Trump administration,” O’Brien said. “He’ll probably be the most senior (Latter-day Saint) official for a while.”