The BYU grad at the heart of Trump's trade war

Yahoo

04-06-2025

The Trump administration may have left its toughest task this week to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, a 44-year-old alumnus of Brigham Young University from Paradise, California.
Greer, who learned to speak fluent French during a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Brussels, Belgium, will be representing the United States at the annual meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, France, on Wednesday.
There, Greer will attempt to advance tariff negotiations with trade ministers from top economies like Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan and South Korea. He is also scheduled to meet with officials from India, Malaysia, Vietnam and the European Union.
'I speak to (the president) on nearly a daily basis,' Greer told CNBC on Friday. 'When it comes to the pure economics, we have problems with all kinds of countries, friend or foe, and we are trying to resolve those.'
But hanging over Greer's diplomatic efforts is a shifting policy environment complicating his mandate to translate President Donald Trump's vision of a remade international order that benefits American manufacturing into concrete trade deals with foreign allies and adversaries.
Last week, a U.S. trade court ruled unanimously that Trump lacked the authority from Congress to impose blanket tariffs on imports from around the world. On Thursday, a federal court granted the administration's request to keep the tariffs in place while they appeal the ruling.
On Friday, Trump accused China of breaking a trade war truce, with Greer alleging on CNBC that Chinese counterparts had been 'slow-rolling' their reversal of export bans on rare-earth materials, a claim Chinese officials rejected on Monday in a statement.
Also on Friday, Trump announced an increase in steel tariffs from 25% to 50%, set to take effect on Wednesday, drawing rebukes from trade partners, including EU officials who said the move 'undermines ongoing efforts to reach a negotiated solution.'
Despite his difficult position, however, Greer's former mentors, law partners and associates say there are few people more prepared than Greer to balance the demands of a Trump White House with the realities of foreign relations and the needs of American workers.
Former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer remembers exactly why he recruited Greer — then a JAG attorney in the Air Force — to work at his practice representing American producers harmed by unfair trade. And it had nothing to do with Greer's policy expertise.
'He didn't know international trade at all when I hired him,' Lighthizer said in an interview with the Deseret News. 'But he was a person of character and a patriot, so that's a pretty good foundation to start the analysis.'
Greer's working-class background paired with his experience abroad made him open to Lighthizer's worldview as the chief intellectual proponent of Trump-style tariffs to reduce trade deficits and boost made-in-America-products, according to Lighthizer.
Raised in a mobile home, with parents taking multiple jobs to make ends meet, Greer understood 'the struggles that Americans face when they are cut out of economic growth' because they aren't on a 'level playing field' with other countries, as Greer said during congressional testimony in February.
Representing only domestic companies, Lighthizer led a team of lawyers at the Washington, D.C., office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, who he said were guided by the philosophy that protecting stable, well-paying manufacturing jobs would, in turn, 'help maintain families, which help maintain communities, which is the reason the country is strong.'
Under the tutelage of Lighthizer, who had served as the deputy U.S. trade representative for President Ronald Reagan, Greer and others were 'taught' this brand of trade law from the basics, according to Stephen Vaughn, who worked with Greer both at Skadden and at his current firm King & Spalding.
Instead of approaching international trade from the perspective of spreadsheets and formulas, their representation of actual American factories gave Greer a firsthand look at how some free trade agreements had let foreign countries take advantage of U.S. companies, Vaughn said.
'So today, when he goes in and sits down with these other countries, he has an enormous experience in terms of not just what it looks like in an economics textbook, but what it looks like in the real world,' Vaughn said.
When Lighthizer was tapped as Trump's first trade representative in 2017, Skadden became a pipeline to the White House, with Greer and Vaughn taking charge of the Office of the United States Trade Representative while Lighthizer awaited congressional approval.
For the next few years, Vaughn served as Lighthizer's general counsel and Greer worked as his chief of staff, where, according to Vaughn, Greer made a name for himself as an effective advocate for Lighthizer and the president's views on international trade.
'He's brilliant — he's one of the most talented people I've ever dealt with,' Vaughn told the Deseret News. 'But he's a very grounded person.'
During Trump's first term, Greer developed the skills he would need to later fill Lighthizer's shoes, helping to craft trade agreements with Mexico, Canada, South Korea and Japan, while implementing a package of tariffs on Chinese imports, according to Steve Orava, who worked with Greer as chair of King & Spalding's international trade practice based in Brussels.
'It's taking what the president wants to do, which is often very general, and coming up with the legal pathways,' Orava told the Deseret News. 'And sometimes that takes creativity, it takes coalition building, it takes communication with others in order to make that happen.'
But as Lighthizer's chief of staff Greer also developed the all-important relationship with Trump that would allow the president to entrust him with trade policy negotiations during his second administration.
In one notable interaction, Greer flew with Trump on Air Force One to visit Greer's hometown of Paradise in 2018 where the deadliest wildfire in California history had taken the lives of 85 individuals and destroyed more than 18,000 structures, including the home of Greer's parents, who Greer had arranged to meet with Trump on the airport tarmac.
As Trump's trade representative in 2025, Greer has been a loyal defender of the president's norm-breaking agenda, with his historic 'Liberation Day' declaration of global 10% tariffs, threats of steeper levies on countries with large trade imbalances and a series of sector-specific duties on steel, aluminum and auto parts.
Despite dramatic impacts on the stock market, and predictions of increased costs for companies and prices for consumers, Greer has said Trump's policies are 'already bearing fruit,' are unlikely to cause inflation and are 'common sense' reforms to address the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and industrial base capacity.
In this belief, there is no daylight between Greer and the populist right's role model of economic policy, Lighthizer, according to Mark DiPlacido, a policy adviser at the conservative think tank American Compass, who briefly served under Greer as the deputy assistant trade representative for public affairs.
'Lighthizer, he more than anyone else, has probably been the most influential on the trade policy side of the 'new right' for a lot of government and policy professionals,' DiPlacido said. 'And Jamieson seems to be taking a similar approach.'
It's a 'very complicated job' that Greer has before him, Lighthizer said, navigating fluctuating signals from the White House, maintaining relationships with offended international partners and collaborating closely with a dysfunctional Congress.
Lighthizer expects Greer to be 'one of the stars' of the second Trump administration because he 'knows in his heart what the objective is,' which is to create 'an economic system that emphasizes American production and the American worker that leads to the overall strength of America.'
Jonathan Freedman, the CEO of World Trade Center Utah, said he hopes the administration's priorities will be able to expand manufacturing options in the state, which has led the nation in manufacturing job growth since 2019.
It is always an advantage to have someone with a relationship to Utah in a cabinet-level position, according to Freedman. And Greer has made his office open to feedback, reaching out to businesses across the country with open comment periods to share how they have been impacted by tariffs.
Ultimately, any shift in international trade policy significantly impacts Utah business operations, Freedman said. Especially for those companies that rely on components and raw materials only found out of the country.
'The USTR has a tough job; he's in the middle of high pressure, complex negotiations with foreign countries, and the result of those negotiations have significant impact on Utah businesses,' Freedman said.
'I'm not sure that prior U.S. trade representatives have been involved with as ambitious of trade negotiations, and I think that Ambassador Greer is doing his best to thread the needle.'