More Trump Tariffs Are Coming

What It Covers

NYT reporter Ana Swanson profiles Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative architecting Trump's tariff agenda. Despite a Supreme Court ruling striking down broad tariffs and public approval ratings at 37%, Greer is preparing two new tariff tranches targeting 80-plus countries using legal frameworks designed to withstand future court challenges.

Key Questions Answered

• •New tariff pipeline: The administration is preparing two distinct tariff waves to replace those struck down by the Supreme Court. The first targets 80-plus countries over inadequate forced-labor laws, imposing roughly 10% tariffs. The second targets 40-plus countries for subsidies and currency manipulation. Both use legal justifications Greer believes are more durable than the previous emergency-powers approach.
• •Greer's three success metrics: Greer measures tariff effectiveness using manufacturing share of GDP, trade deficit reduction, and real wage growth. The trade deficit with China fell 30% and overall goods deficit dropped 25%. Manufacturing wages rose 5% in one year and net manufacturing jobs turned positive in Q1 2026 for the first time in several years.
• •Inflation attribution dispute: Greer rejects Federal Reserve studies showing tariffs drove goods inflation, pointing to the 2018 China tariffs when inflation actually fell from 2.7% to 1.7% the following year. He attributes current price pressures to money supply, the Iran war, and services categories like healthcare and insurance — not import duties on goods.
• •Unilateral-over-coalition strategy: Greer explicitly rejects the approach of coordinating with European and Canadian allies to collectively pressure China, arguing other nations move too slowly and have conflicting interests. His framework prioritizes unilateral U.S. action, accepting diplomatic friction with traditional allies as an acceptable cost of protecting domestic manufacturing and agricultural sectors.
• •Policy reversal difficulty: Swanson assesses that unwinding Trump's tariffs would be politically and structurally difficult for any successor administration. Companies have already reorganized supply chains, trading partners have restructured bilateral relationships, and the Biden administration itself kept Trump's first-term China tariffs. The breadth of second-term tariffs across dozens of industries compounds this lock-in effect.