Greer outlines U.S.-China trade talks after Trump-Xi summit

Jamieson Greer signaled that the Trump administration is chasing a narrow, transactional reset with Beijing, not a sweeping trade thaw. After Donald Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 14 and 15, the U.S. trade representative said China was expected to commit to buying “double-digit billions” of dollars in American farm goods, while the two sides were also considering tariff reductions on roughly $30 billion in goods.

That mix points to the sectors most likely to move first: agriculture and other non-sensitive imports. A managed-trade mechanism for those goods would not erase the tariff regime that has defined U.S.-China trade for years. It would instead create a limited channel for targeted purchases and selective relief, the kind of arrangement that lets both governments claim progress while keeping leverage intact.

The mechanism under discussion has been described as a possible “Board of Trade,” a phrase first broached by Greer in March as a deliverable for the summit. That detail matters because it suggests the administration is thinking less about broad liberalization than about administratively controlled trade flows, with tariffs adjusted package by package rather than across the board. For importers and retailers, that means any relief would likely be uneven and tied to specific goods categories, not a clean rollback.

Greer also said in a Bloomberg interview that semiconductor chip export controls were not a major topic in the Beijing talks, a sign that the most sensitive part of the U.S.-China technology dispute remains largely separate from the trade talks. That makes an immediate breakthrough on chip sales to China unlikely, even as agricultural exporters and companies exposed to tariff-heavy consumer goods watch for early gains.

The trade backdrop is also legal and political. In a USTR statement after the Supreme Court’s IEEPA tariff decision in February, Greer said the administration would continue to pursue its trade policy and pointed to a 17% decline in the goods-trade deficit between April 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025. That figure is now part of the White House argument that tariffs remain a working tool, not just a bargaining chip.

CBS placed Greer on the same May 17 episode of Face the Nation with Taiwan’s representative to the United States, Alexander Yui, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and a bipartisan panel with Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi, along with polling analysis from Anthony Salvanto. The lineup underscored how trade, technology and Taiwan are now being managed as one strategic file, with Beijing likely to face pressure on agriculture first and chips much later.