Donald Trump’s top trade official tried to explain the president’s goal in slapping broad tariffs on imports from countries around the world as he faced sharp questioning on Tuesday from skeptical senators in his first appearance before Congress since the tariffs were announced.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer testified at a Senate Finance Committee hearing that Trump wants America to be a hub for manufacturing and production, and sees trade deficits with other countries — in which American companies import more products from a given nation than U.S. producers send to that country — as “a manifestation of the loss of the nation’s ability to make, to grow, to build.”
Reshaping the economy to manufacture more products domestically may be a difficult process, Greer told senators, but “I am certain the American people can rise to the challenge as they have before.”