In the face of hostile Democrat questioning, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, a key Trump administration leader on tariff policy, voiced awareness of the volatile stock market while steadfastly arguing that it’s time to abandon the Wall Street-favored status quo.
Democrats on the Senate Committee on Finance pressed Greer during a Tuesday hearing on the tariffs, frequently asking him about the drop people have seen in their 401(k) retirement funds, which are tied to the stock market.
“I know everyone’s concerned about Wall Street,” Greer testified. “I’m just concerned about Main Street.”
The U.S. started 2025 with a $130.7 billion trade deficit in January, largely because many of our trading partners have high tariffs on U.S. goods or restrictive policies that make it tough to sell products in their countries. The United States imports or manufactures a lot of stuff outside the U.S., but other countries don’t make or buy as many things here. The Trump tariffs aim to negotiate more reciprocal agreements that will boost the economy, including the stock market.
“The underlying basis for this action is the national emergency rising from the trade deficit,” Greer said. “President Biden left us with a historically high $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which we understand and know to be driven, at least in part, in large part, by non-reciprocity. And so when we’re looking at whether that emergency is abating or being affected is we’re looking at outcomes.”
The Trump administration is looking for other countries to ease the regulations, or “non-tariff barriers,” that prevent U.S. businesses from selling their products there. Trump also wants to reduce the trade deficit. This way the U.S. can export more goods and other countries will stop using the U.S. as “the dumping ground for their overproduction or their subsidized products,” Greer said.
Democrat senators demanded to know what it would take to get Trump to stop the tariff plan.
“Would the administration reverse course if the president’s tariffs led to 10 percent inflation?” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., asked.
Greer said the president is “fixed in his purpose,” a phrase he used numerous times in the hearing. “This trade deficit and the offshoring and loss of manufacturing jobs is something that has persisted for too long, and it’s dangerous,” Greer said.
“Would the administration reverse course if the president’s tariffs caused a 50 percent stock market crash, which would hurt Americans’ retirement savings even more than they’ve been hurt in the last 10 days or so?” Hassan asked.
Greer, citing the recent positive jobs report, said the “fundamentals of the economy are so strong.” Hassan ignored his answer and talked right over him until her time expired.
“Do you agree with President Trump that families are going to have to feel a little pain?” Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., asked. The senator badgered Greer with this question multiple times until Greer agreed.
“That’s an adjustment we have to make to prepare for the future,” Greer said. “We can’t keep doing the same thing we always did. And if companies are having trouble adjusting their supply chains, which I’m very sensitive to, this is something that we have to deal with. We can’t do nothing for four years, like we saw under Biden, where there was just nothing going on on trade.”
Blind to the need to define a more favorable trade plan, Luján went to town with the twisted concept that the Trump administration doesn’t care if it inflicts pain on the American people.
“We’re not going to be in a situation where we keep allowing Wall Street to run the economy, and as we’re making that transition …” Greer started, but LuJan drowned him out with a challenge to spend some time at a grocery store talking to constituents to hear how people feel about high grocery prices.
At another point in the hearing, Greer wondered aloud where all the concern was about high prices when they skyrocketed under former President Biden.
Yet Democrats continued to hammer Greer with questions about whether Trump would continue his tariff policy in the face of hypothetical doomsday scenarios.
“If 700,000 Americans lose their jobs, will the Trump administration suspend these tariffs?” asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Greer said that is not going to happen, adding, “We’ve lost 5 million manufacturing jobs over the years, which is the number I’m most worried about.”
Warren continued, saying the financial data company Moody’s claims that “if the Trump tariffs remain in place, we’ll definitely plunge into a recession, which will ultimately cost three and a half million Americans their jobs.” She asked if the administration would lift the tariffs if three and a half million workers lose their jobs.
“The Wall Street analysts are wrong,” Greer said. “They never want to have any kind of challenge to the status quo.” Despite the analysts who predicted financial devastation in Trump’s first term, Greer pointed out that the opposite happened: Through tax policies and trade actions, real wages increased.
There were bipartisan concerns about small businesses. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., talked about Angela Hawkins, a bamboo sheet and sleepwear manufacturer in his state.
“Angela’s products are made overseas, because you can’t really find bamboo fabric made in the United States. What should Angela do? Pay the new tax? Raise her prices and risk losing customers? Or is there a process for her to apply for an exclusion from the Trump White House?” Warnock asked.
Greer said there are no exclusions “beyond what’s in the program already.”
“She’ll have to work with her business partners,” Greer said, adding that Hawkins may have to look at sourcing her materials from a different country because countries will have different tariff rates.
“I think we’ve waited too long with the status quo,” Greet responded to Warnock’s objections. “I know people want the status quo. They want the trading system that Wall Street likes, but we can’t have that anymore.”
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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