Trump’s top trade official wasn’t informed of tariff delay until after announcement

President Donald Trump’s top trade official said he wasn’t informed of the 90-day pause on most new tariffs until after it was announced.

At the same moment that US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was defending Trump’s stiff tariffs during a House hearing, Trump said on his social media platform that the administration will delay the additional tariff hike on dozens of countries by 90 days — which went into effect for mere hours on Wednesday — with the exception of China.

Trump’s tariff hike, albeit short-lived, was the sharpest ever according to data going back 200 years, Fitch Ratings told CNN, which would have likely resulted in higher inflation and weaker economic growth if they were kept in place, according to most economists.

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When Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada asked Greer when he learned of Trump’s latest tariff move, he said, “Well, I understood the decision was made a few minutes ago.”

“It looks like your boss just pulled out the rug from under you and paused the tariffs,” Horsford said.

Greer then said he was aware the policy change was a possibility Wednesday morning. But when asked directly if he knew the policy was going into effect, he replied that the administration discusses “all kinds of options.”

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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a post on X that he and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were with Trump “while he wrote one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his Presidency.”

“We don’t really know who’s running things over there,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California, a Democrat, referring to Lutnick’s post.

During the hearing, Greer reiterated that the US trade deficit is an “emergency” that warrants Trump’s historic overhaul of US trade policy, but he said the president is still open to negotiating with countries. He said he recently spoke with his counterparts from the European Union, South Korea, Ecuador and Mexico.

Greer told Senate lawmakers on Tuesday that Trump’s blanket tariffs were necessary to combat the overall US trade deficit, even if the stock market languishes and long-time allies are caught in the crossfire. He said Trump’s trade goal is to address foreign countries’ so-called non-trade barriers, which includes regulations that don’t favor US companies.

Meanwhile, US and China are deep in a tit-for-tat trade war. Tariffs on China were hiked to 125% on Wednesday, effective immediately. Before Trump’s announcement, Beijing had retaliated with 84% tariffs on US imports.

“Almost all countries have announced that they’re not going to retaliate against the United States, obviously we have China that has made its own choice,” Greer said. “They’ve always given us a hard time, they’ve always limited our access over there and they’re doubling down on that path, that’s an issue of Chinese agency.”

The European Union also fought back against Trump’s tariffs on Wednesday, backing its first countermeasures against the 25% duties Trump imposed on steel and aluminum imports. The European Commission in a statement said it has a “clear preference to find negotiated outcomes with the US, which would be balanced and mutually beneficial.”

Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the House Ways And Means Committee, claimed that there is “a serious trade problem when it comes to agriculture and the European Union.”

Greer said in response: “It’s fundamentally unfair, it’s structurally unfair, it has been for decades and I’ve been very clear with them that any kind of agreement or negotiation or anything, it has to have an (agriculture) component.”