Name: US Trade Representative Greer on 15% Tariff, USMCA, EU Trade Deal
Uploaded: 2026-02-25T21:32:33.000Z
Duration: 13 min 17 s
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Adverbs of manner

Let's talk about the last week and particularly on Friday.

There is now a new baseline tariff of 10%.

Why did we start with 10% when the President appears to want 15?

So the authority that we're using right now, which is a temporary 150 day authority, that's five months, 150 days.

And we have a lot of countries out there that for a long time have had 10%.

And, and so our goal with all of this is to have continuity.

So we want to have the 10% and it'll, and

we're looking about how to implement the 15% that the President indicated because we want to have continuity.

We want the countries, we want the companies, we want people to understand that what we were doing before, we're going to reconstruct with alternative tools because we want to keep going, maintain the policy.

We'll just have a change in the legal implementing authority.

And basically giving me the impression that this is still under conversation, negotiation, perhaps internally, when the President was pretty explicit over the weekend in his own words, as the President of the United States of America, will be effective immediately raising the 10% worldwide tariff on countries, many of which have been ripping the US off for decades, without retribution to the fully allowed and legally tested 15% level.

How can we sort of explain that which is rather explicit with the more nuanced tone you're offering this morning.

So we'll put out a supplemental proclamation that the President will sign going to 15% where appropriate.

Remember, before the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, a lot of these countries had agreed to have tariffs, U.S.

So going up to 15% for them, at least temporarily, it's better than the deal that they had.

And so the President wants to make sure again that we have continuity in this process, that folks who acknowledged they had giant trade surpluses with us, they had unfair trading practices affecting their trade and who agreed, agreed to pay the tariff, that they actually are in a position to do it until we can get the, the more durable and long lasting measures in place.

Ambassador, when you say when appropriate, is that this week?

Are you looking to do this after the 150 days runs out of the 10% level we currently have?

Oh, it'll, it'll be, it'll be in coming days.

I mean the President put out this direction to your point and so that all of that is in development.

Again, the idea is to establish a through line from the policy that, that the President has implemented successfully over the past year and continue it over this 150 days.

And as we build up appropriate tariff rates using other, other investigations and means.

So when you do raise the 122 tariff to 15%, what's your argument going to be to the Europeans?

Because this is stacking on top of most favored nation rates.

That means that for the Europeans that agreed on a 15% the highest level, they would agree to accept this new rate for some products will be above 15%.

What's going to be the argument to Brussels?

So, so I've been in constant contact with, with my counterparts in Brussels, the UK and elsewhere.

And the way to think about this is every country has domestic procedures that they need to go through to come into compliance with a deal with Brussels.

That stays the same with, with the UK we gave them a quota on cars, we gave them a quota of beef to import duty free.

But just like Brussels hasn't fully implemented its deal, or the UK hasn't fully implemented its deal, we also need a couple months now to have some domestic procedures because the Supreme Court struck down all of this.

It's pretty normal when you have a trade deal to implement over time.

Most trade deals take years to implement.

We're on the fast track and so we're just going to have to have, you know, a couple, three months to make sure that we rejigger the tariffs in a way that comply with our end of the deal.

And we expect the EU and the UK to hold up their end of the bargain too.

But does this new one, 20 to 15% now basically break the EU trade agreement, given where most favored nation products are and those rates?

So right now, as we talked about 10% in place, there will be a proclamation raising it to 15% where appropriate.

And so once that comes out, we'll, I'm happy to come back on and explain how that, how that might accommodate other countries where there's a deal.

Well, any of the rates on any country stay at 10%.

We go through the legal process and we get out a proclamation.

Again, this is, any time we put on a tariff, we're going to have foreign interests who want to, who want to bring it down.

So I'm not going to get ahead of the President, I'm not going to get ahead of the White House counsel and all These folks who are implementing this.

So when that comes out, it'll be very clear what and how and why.

Ambassador, in some of your comments it seems like you're suggesting that the rate could go above 15%.

And I just am curious what exactly you're planning to use.

It's been discussed that section 301 in particular will be used to go after places like China, which it has been used for before.

So section 301 is a country specific tool and it allows the President to investigate unfair trading practices by countries.

And again, this is what we've been getting at over the past year as we've concluded deals with with over a dozen countries.

They have agreed to eliminate unfair barriers to our trade, take down their tariffs, you know, eliminate, you know, fake regulatory barriers, etc.

And so we can actually conduct these investigations under section 301 on a country by country basis, figure out exactly what they're doing that's been so problematic and negotiate with those countries, but

also impose a tariff as enforcement to make sure that they eliminate those practices.

You know, China certainly, but also other countries, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, the Europeans potentially.

But the point is to recreate the policy that we've developed over the past year to give continuity and be able to be in a position where we can honor the deals but also have enforcement available.

That's the only reason why these countries have made all these concessions and because they know the President's willing to enforce and willing to raise tariffs if he needs to.

So there are a couple that are that have already started.

We opened a Section 301 investigation on Brazil a few months ago.

We opened up one on China a few months ago about compliance with the Phase one deal.

And we have many others that we are preparing right now and we expect to launch in the coming days and weeks, such as related to forced labor in supply chains, industrial excess capacity, or unfair trading practices with respect to fishing or seafood or rice or subsidies for certain products and that kind of thing.

So Ambassador, you were potentially Planning to use 301 because when I spoke to you and your colleagues in the past, there was this concern, Supreme Court could strike down iaeba.

So why didn't you do these investigations from the very beginning?

IPA was the most appropriate tool to use because we are facing an emergency in this country.

In the five years prior to President Trump's second term, our U.S.

trade deficit exploded by 40% to reach $1.2 trillion.

The largest trade deficit in human History and the trade deficit was a manifestation of many things, but

one of them is a lot of offshoring of production to other countries.

Jobs and manufacturing that went to China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc.

To the point where our defense industrial base was challenged, our manufacturing base and jobs were hollowed out.

And this was an emergency and is an emergency.

And so the President used an emergency power to move very, very quickly.

Section 301 and section 232, some of our alternative tools, they take more time, they take more process, they're very effective.

But they didn't have the flexibility and the speed we needed to really out the gate, make these points, get the deals with the countries and now we can go back and make them firm.

Ambassador Canada and Mexico of course will be down separately.

But does the President feel constrained by usmca?

So I wouldn't say feel, feel constrained.

We're in the middle of a, of a, of a review that we have to conduct in the United States.

I'm in contact with my counterparts from both Mexico and Canada.

There are things in USMCA that, that makes sense that, you know, don't get a lot of news because they function fine.

But there are a lot of things where we don't have the type of market access we want, whether it's in goods or services.

We have Mexico that historically over the past few years has been discriminating against US Energy producers and service providers.

We have Canada that limits our access for dairy, has taken American wine and spirits off its shelves.

We also have concerns about trans shipment through Canada and Mexico of goods from third countries coming through and benefiting from duty free treatment from usmca.

And so we want to make sure that if there's an agreement with either of these countries that it really benefits these countries and not third countries that might use Canada or, or Mexico as an export hub into the United States.

Josh Wingrove and the team down in Bloomberg News in Washington D.C.

reporting more recently that the President is privately musing about exiting the North American Trade pact.

What can you share with us this morning about the prospect of that happening?