On March 3, 2025, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released the 2025 Trade Policy Agenda and 2024 Annual Report by the United States Trade Representative of the President of the United States on the Trade Agreements Program (U.S. Trade Representative Announces 2025 Trade Policy Agenda | United States Trade Representative, hereinafter “Agenda”). The report outlines the rationale of the Trump Administration for its trade policy goals and actions. It complements and expands on the America First Trade Policy Executive Order (America First Trade Policy – The White House) issued on January 20, 2025, President Trump’s first day in office for his second term. It also encompasses the massive imposition of tariffs by the President on April 2 in his so-called “Liberation Day” Executive Order and Fact Sheet.
The Agenda of USTR Ambassador Jameson Grier reads much like that of his predecessor and mentor, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer. It posits that tariffs are a legitimate tool of public policy to respond to “a withering, decades-long assault by globalist elites who have pursued policies—including trade policies—with the aim of enriching themselves at the expense of the working people of the United States.” (Agenda p. 1). The Agenda calls for tough trade enforcement against countries who think they can take advantage of the U. S. and get away with it. It also supports aggressive trade negotiations to create leverage to “rebalance out trading relations and to re-shore production, including, but not limited to, through the use of tariffs.” (Agenda, p. 4). The shift to a Production Economy is designed to result in a high-wage economy, that creates jobs for all, fosters innovation, and bolsters U.S. national defense.
One of the key points used to justify new trade actions is the need to, “investigate the causes of our country’s large and persistent annual trade deficits in goods, as well as the economic and national security implications and risks resulting from such deficits.” (Agenda, pl 3). It claims trade deficits are a draining of American wealth to other nations, caused by unfair and nonreciprocal trade practices, including high tariff barriers to strategically important U.S. exports, and by China’s “economic system, which is fundamentally incompatible with the open, market-oriented direction envisioned by WTO Members and is contrary to the original principles of the WTO and its agreements.” (The World Trade Organization At Thirty And U.S. Interests. P. 1).
Some of the high tariff spikes in other countries are based on residual protection of other countries’ domestic interests from the successful negotiation of the Uruguay Round agreements the resulted in the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the mid-1990s. There was some hope that those tariffs would be addressed in further negotiations at the WTO that have never materialized. The Agenda looks back to the prior Trump Administration of 2016 – 2020 as the model for the new agenda. It also provides an analysis of U.S. actions at the WTO designed to address its failures, as identified by the report, including a robust critique of China’s deliberate strategy to undermine the WTO agreements and enrich itself by taking advantage of all other members. “In fundamental respects, the WTO, now comprised of 166 Members, has lost its way. This did not occur overnight. It began in large part when China abandoned the market-oriented reform path on which its 2001 accession was premised and embraced state-led, non-market economic practices.” (Id., p. 2)
The WTO section of the Agenda posits that the WTO has been unable to reduce disparities and imbalances due to institutional problems, including the focus on Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) by roughly three quarters of member nations unwilling to respect the full set of disciplines in the agreements. Their ability to self-declare SDT status is a huge hurdle to reform. The WTO has not adequately addressed non-market policies and practices, particularly those of China, due to its “well-chronicled and endemic lack of transparency [that] has long frustrated Members’ attempts to understand China’s trade-distorting non-market policies and practices and monitor their compliance with WTO rules and principles.” (Id., p. 3). The dispute settlement system has long been a target of Trump officials and it is roundly criticized in the text. The report blames the inability of the organization to reform itself on SDT and claims by members that they are entitled to lesser disciplines as a matter of right that they self-declare without adequate justification. It also points to the failure of the WTO to negotiate meaningful outcomes as a sign of its failure. “The United States has tried—and will continue to try—to solve these problems. But patience wears thin.” (Id., p. 9).
In fairness, I must admit that the critique of the WTO, which reads much like the 2017 Trade Policy Agenda under the first Trump Administration, to be more compelling today due to the lack of movement on key issues and the drift in leadership at the WTO eight years later. The 2024 Annual Report on the Trade Agreements program was written by the prior USTR and therefore addresses the various actions by USTR in 2024 without reference to the new philosophy of the Trump Administration.
I do not support the unilateral imposition of tariffs by any country in violation of international agreements and domestic law, including the Liberation Day U.S. tariffs . As a dedicated free trade advocate and former negotiator and administrator of free trade agreements, I find the focus on trade deficits to justify the unilateral imposition of high tariffs on our trading partners in violation of existing agreements, including the USMCA, and existing trade legislation by the new administration to be misplaced.
I also do not fundamentally agree with the U.S. acting unilaterally to slap high tariffs on other countries because it has already predictably resulted in retaliatory high tariffs on U.S. goods. These actions by most countries against the U.S. policy actions runs the risk of new trade walls around the world that will impede free and fair trade, reduce GDP in all countries, and potentially create the conditions for a recession or depression, exactly like the Smoot-Hawley tariffs imposed by the original Trade and Tariff Act of 1930. That outcome is NOT in the U.S. national or security interests and should be controlled by the Congress under Article 2 of the Constitution.
