When President Trump announced the 90-day pause in combination with the increase in tariffs against China, there was a background element missed by many.
At the moment President Trump triggered the public announcement, U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer was testifying to congress.
President Trump is not a jerk. Donald Trump would not put a top executive Greer in that optically vulnerable position if USTR Greer was the tip of the spear, it’s just bad business form.
The timing and background indicate something more substantial. For what we are calling ‘the BIG UGLY’ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the point, Greer is a functionary. It’s a shift from the Term-1 approach, because the global trade reset is magnitudes bigger and more substantive.
This approach would also explain why Robert Lighthizer was not reenlisted in Term-2. If Lighthizer was in Greer’s chair in front of congress at the moment of the public announcement, he would have been furious and rightly so. Lighthizer and Wilbur Ross were the tip of the spear in term-1, Lighthizer facing the region of Asia and Ross facing Europe; but the same strategy is not present in term-2.
In the Term-2 trade reset, the entire globe is being targeted simultaneously. Enter, the U.S. Treasury Secretary in a bigger, more substantive, and much more prominent role due to the scale of the trade reset.
This trade approach is much bigger, obviously. As the nuclear-level trade detonation takes place, Secretary Bessent is in control of both the financial market response and the core finances of the USA as it relates to the reverberations.
