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Transcript: U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” May 17, 2026

2026-05-17T09:05:00-0400 / CBS News

The following is the transcript of the interview with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on May 17, 2026.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We begin this morning with a top member of the president’s economic team, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Good morning to you, Ambassador.

JAMIESON GREER: Good morning. Good to be here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: It isn’t just a matter of sentiment. Gas is at an average of $4.51 a gallon. Americans have spent $45 billion more on fuel since the war began versus a year ago. The stock market is up, but lower-income Americans are pulling back on their spending. The New York Fed reports households earning less than $125,000 a year are fueling up their cars less often. How do you provide relief to the average American?

JAMIESON GREER: Well, we know that no one wants to see higher gas prices. At the same time, the president is balancing foreign policy considerations. We know that, in addition to wanting to have low gas prices, we don’t want our children or grandchildren to inherit a world where Iran has a nuclear weapon, so the president is focused on affordability in as many ways that he can- that he can. He’s bringing jobs back to America. We’re focused on getting wages up to offset any kind of increase in prices, and we’re seeing prices go down for staples like dairy, cheese, flour, etc. So we’re very focused on this. The president’s focused on it, and we look forward to seeing those prices come down soon as the operations wrap up in the Gulf.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But we have no time frame for that at this point. Let me ask you about what you were just working on in Asia. China said it agreed with the United States to establish a board of investment to consider Chinese investment here in the U.S., and to establish bilateral boards of trade to discuss tariffs. Which products are going to be affected by that board. Are these items outside the current investigations that you are conducting?

JAMIESON GREER: So, when we think about the Board of Trade, we’re thinking about how to manage economic relations between the U.S. and China. These are two economies that are quite different, and we’re focused on trade in non-sensitive goods. When you talk about sensitive goods, you know the most high-tech stuff, you know, things that can be used for military uses, those are things that- those are national security issues. So we’re looking to discuss things like sales of agricultural goods to China, energy goods, Boeings, medical devices. When we talk about the kinds of things we want to be importing from China, there are a number of things, there can be consumer goods, maybe low-tech items, and so we look at those types of areas where we should be trading. On the investment side, the Board of Investment is really about discussing key issues in U.S.-China investment policy. It’s not really an investment program, but it’s to try to almost be like a firefighter and put out issues when they arise between the two countries.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So really this just seems a message of stability, because you were already discussing a lot of these things on a bilateral basis, right? I mean, what’s new?

JAMIESON GREER: So we have never had a Board of Trade or a Board of Investment before, we’ve always had an ad hoc approach with China and the United States, which I think is actually challenging. I think it’s more important to formalize these relations. The United States has a host of tariffs, import controls, export controls on China. China has a number of non-tariff barriers that have been in place for a long time, other challenges they impose to block our imports and things like that. It’s much better to discuss these in a formalized way between our government and their government. In addition to this, we saw China over the past couple of days reduce a host of nontariff barriers on agricultural products, such as beef and poultry, et cetera. And so we’ve seen them already starting to do things to facilitate imports from the United States.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I’ll come back to some of those in a moment, but I want to ask you about tariffs. The president said to reporters he did not discuss tariffs with Xi Jinping at all. Are we in an indefinite trade truce, or were you- are you looking at bringing that tariff rate back to where it was before the Supreme Court ruling?

JAMIESON GREER: Well, the Chinese know, and that’s part of our deal, that the United States can can elevate tariffs to the higher level that we had at the time of what we call the Busan deal in October, when President Xi and President Trump met, following the Supreme Court case in February, about 10 percentage points were knocked off the tariff rate for China. We believe under our deal that we are able to elevate that again. The president is exploring different tools that he has. I don’t want to prejudge a lot of the investigations that are happening. The Chinese know, just like many other countries we’re dealing with, that we’re going to have a certain level of tariff to control our imports, but that we also expect market opening.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, but the last time you were here after the Supreme Court decision, you said that when some of these tariffs expire in July, that you would expect to roll out new tariffs after the end of these investigations under authority 301. So, are you saying now that you no longer expect tariffs to come into place after July?

JAMIESON GREER: Well, I think I was careful to tell you, because my general counsel always tells me to say this. I can’t prejudge the outcomes of those investigations. Those investigations, if they find on- tariff barriers or unfair trading practices, they can authorize the president to take actions like tariffs, like fees on services, like quotas, things like that. So we’ll certainly be presenting the president with those options, if those, if those investigations show what we think they might show, which is that there’s a huge problem with over capacity in China and other countries. So we’ll- we’ll get back to you on the findings in those investigations when they conclude.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, we did see China on Saturday release a statement confirming some of the deals with the U.S., but it was pretty vague. There was no mention of the promise to buy 750 Boeing planes that President Trump told reporters about if the first 200 go well. China said there was a guarantee by the U.S. to supply aircraft engines, but it didn’t mention the 400 to 450 GE engines that the president announced. GE hasn’t commented either. So, how locked in are these agreements?

JAMIESON GREER: So, the 200 Boeings, those are locked in. There’s obviously a future to have more Boeings. The reality is, this is the first major purchase by China in almost 10 years of Boeings or orders, rather. So that’s- that’s going forward, and like the president said. You know, when and if Boeing delivers, there’s- there’s a lot of upside there. With respect to some of the other details. We’re finalizing a fact sheet that will hopefully get out very soon, so we can be clear about the double digit increase in agricultural purchases we expect from the Chinese, and some of the other things that happened and were agreed to during the visit.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, and I know GE is meeting with China today, but we haven’t seen anything from them on the aircraft engines. On the ag products, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board questioned whether the summit achieved any of the stated wins, because of how vague these things have been. They said “Mr. Trump boasted about fantastic Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans in aircraft, but China didn’t confirm the sales, and by our count, this is the second time China has bought the same American soybeans, or is it the third?” They’re kind of arguing you’re playing a shell game here with, like, reannouncing past deals on past agreements to purchase over a period of time. Can you answer these conservative skeptics with any specifics?

JAMIESON GREER: So, first of all, we’ve had a deal in place with the Chinese since October that they would buy 25 million metric tons of soybeans each year for the rest of the president’s administration, so that deal is still in force. What we expect with the new purchase agreements, where the specific number will be announced very soon, double digit purchases of aggregate agricultural products. When I say aggregate, I mean everything else that could be soybeans, that could be beef, that could be grains, that could be dairy products, all kinds of things. So we have the existing soybean deal that they may be referring to, and then over on top of that we have these agricultural products as well, and all of that will be facilitated by Board of Trade discussions with the Chinese.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So still not nailed down, just an aggregate agreement. So how many concessions did the US make? What were those concessions in order to get this?

JAMIESON GREER: Well, one thing, they’re- they’re balance trades here, right? We’re trying to get to balance trade with the Chinese. For a long time, it’s been out of whack. So, when you see something like what the Chinese said, which I can confirm, about a sale of Boeings accompanied by a sale of aircraft and auto parts and spare- auto parts, aircraft parts, and those kinds of things. The Chinese want to make sure that they have regular access to these kind of spare items, so they can continue to fly their fleets. So that’s something we want to do. We are focused on mutually beneficial trade, so when you’re talking about that kind of thing, what we should be exporting, what we should be importing, becomes less a question of concessions and more a question of what’s mutually beneficial for both of us. That’s why we’re so focused on non-sensitive trade, because that doesn’t, that doesn’t require concessions, that’s about working together, talking about what they need, what we want to sell, what we need from them, so we’re already seeing it as they’ve re-registered beef facilities, where beef facilities expired. They’re taking poultry again, they’re working with us on biotech traits to make sure that those types of products that have genetic modification can go into China without any problem.

MARGARET BRENNAN: China still sells more to the US than it buys, but that difference has decreased by about 31 and a half percent. So, thank you, Ambassador.

JAMIESON GREER : Yes, we’re very happy to see that progress. It’s a main goal that we have, and it’s good to be achieving it.