Stalled, Violated, or Concerning? USTR’s Greer on China 5/30/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. Tariffs on again, the whiplash of federal courts' response to the Trump administration tariff policy, reciprocal levies back. We talked to the U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer in a wide-ranging interview on the policy seesaw and talking to China. We've been very focused on monitoring Chinese compliance, or in this case non-compliance, with the agreement. And we're very concerned with it. And the fast-growing wellness company worth more than a billion dollars. AG1 CEO Kat Kohl says supplements have the greens we need.

0:40We tested healthy individuals, standard American diet, athletes, non-athletes, people with GI issues. And all across the board it showed we have nutrient gaps. Plus, all the rest of today's news that got us squawking. It's Friday, May 30th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand under by in three, two, one, cue Andrew. Good morning and welcome to Spot Box right here on CNBC. We are live at the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin along with Joe Kernan. Becky's on assignment this morning. I'm looking at the S &P. It did finally close down a little yesterday, but it was a weird session yesterday, was it not?

1:23Now to the latest, and it has to do with this. Relatively small moves, though. We were up 400. That sounds like a lot, but not so much. And we were it was weird because it was during the session that they were back on. And I admitted to myself that I wasn't just ecstatic that the court had said, you know, I don't like tariffs. But we've we've come this far and we're negotiating with all these trading partners. And if you just take away any impetus or motivation for them to come to the table after doing all this. So I almost felt like I. So you were happy that the court put it back in place. Kind of.

2:04And then I saw and I didn't realize there are. And I was watching Scott Besson. I was watching and we'll have Jameson Greer on today. There's if this doesn't work, there are other. There's a hundred ways to do it. There are other ways to do it. Well, that was a little bit of Michael Froman was telling us yesterday. Yeah, which was. There are other methods. And in the past, executive power has been respected, I think, a little bit more. This is Trump. So he's like a one off for a lot of people. And, you know, you look at how and he's a one off for other reasons, too. People that like a lot of these court injunctions say, well, he's so crazy, the stuff he's doing.

2:43Of course, there's many more than in previous presidencies. But then again, in the past, you have seen some deferral to the chief executive, to the president, on tariff matters. I was going to say, yesterday we discussed how presidents often, Democrats too, push things beyond the limits. And who's there to stop them? The courts. And that happened, by the way, with the student loan issue, which I think we all, I mean, I don't know if everyone agreed, but you and I actually agreed on that together. Immigration issues, sanctuary city, there's a lot of things. But tariff issues, that's something that was left.

3:20If the chief executive of the country wants to do some of these things, they've gotten a lot more leeway in the past. And, you know, whether Congress needs to to actually legislate for this to happen, it's unclear. There's been some legislation in the past that they're going to rely on now to say, hey, there's a 1974 rarely used provision that they're going to use. The I.I.P.E., whatever that was, the emergency when that that might have been a bridge too far. But there's other ones to fall back on that we'll ask. And that's what I think Froman was talking about. We'll talk to Greer about that, too.

3:52But the latest court ruling, it blocked the the reciprocal tariffs, sweeping reciprocal tariffs. That didn't block all of them, though. There's some that was still in effect. The federal appeals court temporarily put that really ruling on hold. So while it considers the administration's challenge to that lower court decision, the order didn't rule on the merits of the case, just gives Trump administration time to make its case so it could still come down on the side of no tariffs. The White House had asked the appeals court to step in on an emergency basis. They were also said that they were prepared to ask the Supreme Court to intervene to avoid irreparable national security and economic harms that are at stake.

4:33In a long post on Truth Social yesterday, President Trump blasted the Court of International Trade and asked whether their ruling was purely a hatred of Trump. Uh-oh, it's talking in the third person, or in the first, it's third person again. Do you ever do that? Sorkin says this, or Sorkin? I know someone who does that. Except my Instagram account. Yeah? The name of it. Yeah. Not chosen by myself, is Sorkin Says. It's Sorkin Says. Like, anyway. Yeah. See, Kernan doesn't go for that. Kernan. No. Wait a minute. I just did it. He also slammed the Federalist Society for recommending one of the judges he appointed during his first term who ruled against him in the tariff case.

5:19So he's. I didn't see that part. The Federalist recommended. So he said, OK, so he did it. And now he's mad that it's like a David Souter type situation. It sounds like. Meantime, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson saying that U.S.-China trade talks are, quote, a bit stalled and will require President Trump and China's President Xi to speak directly. He made those comments in an interview with Fox News. Now, Secretary Besson saying he expects more talks with China in the next few weeks and said there may be a call between the two leaders, quote, at some point. I watched that entire interview. And I guess if someone had to get it besides us, I was glad it was Brett there on his show.

6:03But I was a little bit shocked because he said, when Brett asked him about China, he said, those talks are stalled currently. And that's not, you asked one of the other people in the administration, even like the press secretary or something, what's going on with China? Are talks stalled? They would never, ever tell you the truth and actually admit it's something that doesn't sound good for the administration. they usually have a way of getting around it or saying it in a way where they don't. He just came out and said it. Yeah. Unless you think Scott wants the public to know that and wants Chinese to know that.

6:39Remember when he got back, we were all excited about what he and Jameson Greer said about what went on in China. So I figured things were moving along. So for him, you said it's not happening. But I know. But by the way, not because I don't want... You're in a fall position. I know, but you're in a fall position. Is that just because I'm trying to read the tea leaves What's actually happening here? He leads China. Your default position is skepticism. That's fine. It should be as a journalist. If I ever become a journalist, I might employ the same. I don't see that happening, though. But I just thought it was just watching him.

7:17And I still like when he talks because his words are calming. And I think you get you always want the truth, even though I don't think you can handle the truth. That's true. But even though you want the truth, we rarely get it. And I think we get it from him. That I do. Really sucking up going to get him back on the show. President Trump said he's going to hold a press conference today at 1.30 p.m. with Elon Musk in the Oval Office. He said this will be his last day, but not really, because he will always be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific. sick. Two other, and this goes into probably your, what you were saying yesterday, that the people that were giddy about the big rift, there's no rift.

8:02The rift between Elon and... You know, everybody wanted to say that this was a, you know, the end of the bromance, not to the end of a bromance, that there was a, you know, a divorce here. Right. I think there might be a little bit of the end of the bromance in that obviously he's going home, but I don't think there's a divorce here and i think the truth is that elon to the extent that he probably feels either both uh compelled to will continue to support the president different ways will he spend the hundred million dollars on you know republicans in in the next uh midterms that he promised earlier that i think is still up in the air what his involvement in politics in the future is going to be is still a real question will he wear the hats anymore make america great make uh i'm not or Trump was right about everything.

8:48Well, if you saw it, by the way, interestingly, a little daylight in that CBS Sunday morning piece, the little drips and drabs of that piece have started to come out again since that one comment about the beautiful bill. The newest one is, he says, look, I never agreed with everything the administration did. I agreed with a lot of it, but I'm like a person, and I didn't always want to feel responsible for everything that these people were doing. So that was interesting. He was very honest. Talking about being honest. Do you think that it's easy for me? No. I mean, I have the same issue. And I said that actually to members of my family.

9:31It's like sometimes it's really hard not to just trash everything. It's hard to always, you can't always back everything that this administration is going to do. You just can't. You can't. And don't come to me for that. I meant, you know, if I back 55 % of it, it's probably good. But in your case, I think you might be quite a bit lower. No, look, there's things I like. You back 55 %? I'm not here, but my job's not to back one side or the other. I know it's not. Well, like, as I said, I've always been a Reagan sort of. I know. OK, so I'm hoping for the best. But there are times where this is not even close.

10:11I'm hoping for the best, too. OK. Yeah, that's where we differ. I was more McConnell. I think the difference is what is the best. I was more like Mitch McConnell. No, that's what it is. Look, we're always having debates about ideas. You're hoping for the best. I'm hoping for the best. I think a lot of the folks who are watching this show are hoping for the best. It's a question of how people define what the best is. Oh, I can define that. But then we'd start arguing again. The two other people left, Doge, too. And what I was going to say was I saw someone said that Elon Musk left the job of trying to make the government more efficient for the much easier job of putting people on Mars.

10:57He's got it. This guy just runs to fires. Meantime, shares of Ulta Beauty higher. Earnings and comp sales beating estimates. The company raising its full year guidance. the company's CEO, saying many consumers indicate that they are leaning into beauty as a comfort and escape, an escape, Joe, from the stress of macro uncertainty. So folks are going to Ulta Beauty and escaping from all the travails. I think you should spend more time in makeup. I relax in there. Yeah, you just kind of, it's almost like a facial massage. Right, so I do it like I'm an F1 car. I do like an F1 car going into the thing.

11:40Yeah. As time passes, you'll be more concerned with makeup. Take my word for it. You don't need it now. It's like gilding a lily with you right there. Thanks. You're welcome. Cheese will be next. Coming up, a new report says federal officials are investigating an effort to impersonate White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Where was Carlos Watson talking? Oh, where's Carlos Watson? It may have involved artificial... Probably working in the White House now. I think he's out, right? And a surprise Truth Social post on trade from President Trump right in the middle of our interview with U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer.

12:18Today, it is China in the spotlight. When they agreed in Geneva to remove their tariff and their countermeasures, they removed the tariff like we did, but some of the countermeasures they've slowed on. If you read the news, you can see that Europe, Japan, United States, elsewhere, where we haven't seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing. More Squawk Pod after this.

12:45Welcome back to Squawk Pod, today with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Federal authorities are investigating a clandestine effort to impersonate White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. That's according to a Wall Street Journal report, said someone reached out to prominent Republicans and business executives pretending to be her. The FBI and White House are trying to find out who is behind that effort and what their intentions were. The journal says some people familiar with the matter said officials believe AI, artificial intelligence, was used to imitate Wiles's voice. Lawmakers were reportedly suspicious of the calls when the impersonator asked questions about President Trump that Wiles should have already known the answers up to.

13:34And in one case, the impersonator actually asked for a cash transfer. By the way, though, this is something we're talking about in the context of government, which is nerve wracking. It's happening in the context of business. CEOs, COOs, like this is what this is the new thing that everyone's got to be nervous about. You are going to start getting calls from people that you think, you know, asking you to do stuff. And think about if you were running a company and you got a call from someone who supposedly your CFO saying, oh, we got to transfer. You know, by the way, we got to do this transfer this afternoon about whatever.

14:08Right. And you actually think you're talking to your the person who works with you. Right. Like that's happening. It could be a lot. everybody needs a password. Seriously. We need our own password, you and me. So that we're not, if you get a call that, you know, I'm in jail, I need to be bailed. If I get a call from you, I know it's not real to begin with. Exactly. That's right. Would you bail me out if I absolutely needed help to get into the show? I don't know what I'm arrested for. You need to get into the show. That's why I'm bailing you out to get you into the show. Yeah. I'm bailing you out to get you into, bail you out.

14:47All right, for the latest on the Trump administration's court ruling on tariffs and what's next, let's bring in U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jameson Greer. It's great to have you on today. It was great last time. Welcome back. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Great to be back. Thanks for having me. I guess we'll start with some of your comments about the rulings yesterday and the prospects for what is likely to happen. And I know there's a lot of things that are being discussed right now. Do you think if we were to get emergency relief from the Supreme Court, you think they'd come down on the president's side?

15:26Do you think you have a strong case or will it stand the way it is right now? Well, I think we have a very strong case. Congress clearly delegated to the president the ability to take action when there's a national emergency. We've declared a national emergency. We've taken action. We have a stay from the circuit court right now. All the other countries I'm dealing with in negotiations are treating this as just kind of a bump in the road rather than any fundamental change. So I feel pretty confident about the case. And if the case goes the other way, we have other tools as well. Yeah, I expressed that sentiment earlier that you don't know what you've got until it's gone.

16:03As a pure conservative and a markets type guy, tariffs, I think they can be effective. But there's times when we kind of wish that we would just maybe not be doing as many. But then we've gone we've come along so far, Mr. Ambassador, that to pull the rug out from the negotiating ability by making all these countries we're negotiating with think that the tariffs might not stick. That's frustrating. But you're telling me again that none of those countries expressed any. they weren't saying, all right, we're going to pull out of these negotiations because we don't need to anymore. It's actually the opposite.

16:44When I woke up the morning after the initial ruling, before we had the stay, I had emails and texts from foreign officials saying, we're just going to keep negotiating with you as before. We understand that this is litigation. Things go up and down. We understand the U.S. policy going forward, and we're negotiating with you as before. So that's what's happening. I guess, you know, you've read enough about some people view the emergency, that provision is maybe not being the best way to do. Is it possible you would use the Trade Act of 1974? You get 150 days and then you have to actually go on an individual basis and prove that tariffs are something to be done.

17:32Is that being looked at at this point? Well, first of all, it's important to understand that the president's trade team has been thinking about these legal tools for years. Right. We have a lot of folks on TV and the Internet who've been thinking about it for about six minutes. So, of course, these are things that we've been considering and talking about for a very long time. All these things are on the table. The reality is we have this enormous trade deficit. It got worse over the Biden years. And if we don't fix the global trading system, it's just going to get even worse going forward. We have to fix it.

18:04Right. But you think you could convince the Supreme Court that suddenly the Rubicon was passed in terms of the trade deficit, that now it's an emergency, but it hasn't been an emergency. We've had a trade deficit for decades. I just think, isn't it hard to make the case suddenly it's reached that level, that it's now an emergency? No, I don't think that's a problem. And in fact, the lower court that took issue with the president's action, it wasn't really on the nature of the emergency so much as their views on the implementation. The reality is the trade deficit has exploded by 40 percent over the past four years.

18:41It was$850 billion around the beginning of the Biden administration, ended at$1.2 trillion. So that's extreme by any measure. It's one thing to have a deficit or surplus that fluctuates over time. But to have it increase so substantially in such a short time and be accompanied by also a worsening in our net international investment position where we're at negative$26 trillion at the end of last year. I mean, this is crazy stuff where foreign firms and individuals have claims on U.S. assets in a way they've never had it before. That's a dangerous situation. James, this is what's happening in the markets.

19:19It's not you, as far as I can tell. There has been President Trump just did post on Truth Social saying that, in his words, two weeks ago, China was in grave economic danger. The very high tariffs I said made it virtually impossible for China to trade in the United States marketplace, which is by far number one in the world. We went, in effect, cold turkey with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed, to put it mildly. There was civil unrest. I saw it was happening and didn't like it for them, not for us. I made a fast deal with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation.

19:58And I didn't want to see that happen because of this deal. Everything stabilized, got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy. That's the good news. Bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly, has totally violated its agreement with us. So much for being Mr. Nice Guy. Did you know about the heads up about this? I mean, this has been something we've been discussing ever since Geneva. You know, the president, you know, I speak to him nearly daily basis as to his other advisors. And we've been very focused on monitoring Chinese compliance or in this case, noncompliance with the agreement.

20:33And we're very concerned with it. We moved, as the president just said, very quickly. No one can deny that. The United States did exactly what it was supposed to do. And the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance, which is completely unacceptable and has to be addressed. is it beneficial for this negotiation now to be effectively taking place in public i mean there's been some level of which this has already happened uh with us we've actually been quieter frankly than they have uh to some degree but the president's comments today obviously as we're watching the market uh you know this is this is complicating things well i mean listen i i would say there you know a lot of different ways to deal with folks uh you make every effort to to be diplomatic and professional and to do things behind closed doors.

21:18But at some point, the impact on the U.S. economy or the trade relationship becomes such that it's hard to withhold that anymore. We might have gotten a little bit of a heads up on this from last night when the Treasury Secretary in an interview said that talks had completely stalled with China and that it was going to take a phone call with President Trump to President Xi to get things back on tracking expected that the next couple of weeks. Can you say that is that in the works? Yes, that's accurate. And, you know, the Treasury secretary, you know, his characterization is accurate, of course.

21:58I would say that, you know, conversations and calls continue at lower levels, but ultimately the nature of the things we're talking about, it does require some leader to leader understandings, right? We made a huge effort in Geneva to accommodate the Chinese. And listen, it always ends up being this way, whether it's the United States or other Western countries, have always sought to accommodate the Chinese. We've had open markets, et cetera. And time and time again, you know, we see the, you know, the Chinese come down and not comply with their agreements, you know, slow rule compliance, you know, not open their economy like they should.

22:30So, unfortunately, we're seeing that trend continue. And I ask this effectively on behalf of just the folks who are watching us. Can you tell us specifically what they did or frankly didn't do in this case? Well, remember, when the United States imposed reciprocal tariffs on the world, right, this wasn't China specific. There were other countries that had higher tariff rates than China assigned to them. China was the only country to retaliate. Remember that. And so the president was forced to retaliate to maintain the effectiveness of the tariff. Now, when the Chinese were. Yeah, let me get to that.

23:02When the Chinese retaliated, it wasn't just with a tariff. They put in place countermeasures where they put certain U.S. companies on blacklists. They restricted the flow of rare earth magnets to us and other countries in the world. And so when they agreed in Geneva to remove their tariff and their countermeasures, they removed the tariff like we did, but some of the countermeasures they've slowed on. If you read the news, you can see that Europe, Japan, United States, elsewhere, we haven't seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing. We have also heard, I guess this was Kevin Hassett in this case, that there may be something forthcoming in the next week or so in terms of some of these trade deals, maybe with some of our important partners?

23:47Can you shed any light on that? Sure. I mean, I'll say that I have almost standing calls with the Indian trade minister every day. I have meetings next week at the OECD with the Malaysians, the Vietnamese, the EU. We're in intensive talks with all of them. You know, we also want to make sure we kind of get through the stay in appeals with with the current tariff situation. So our partners have a better understanding of the landing zone. But like I said before, the negotiations are on track and we do hope to have some deals in the next couple of weeks. What's the the is there a running total on how much has been garnered so far on the tariffs?

24:28James, I mean, we're now in the we've moved. we haven't moved on but we're talking a lot about the the big beautiful bill uh and there are you know some concerns about uh deficits etc and even though it can't be in this in the included maybe in the the cvo estimates um and anything would be good to add to you know to try to pay our debts no i i think that's right and listen obviously the the president's action is based on a national emergency getting down the deficit but you say you have tariff there is a revenue effect and and if you look at the revenue effect you know i'm not the omb guy but it's you know it's hundreds of billions of dollars of the tariffs go forward as proceed as uh it's currently drafted when do you we expect to hear about whether you need to take a different uh a different route in in terms of whether you'd need to go to that 1974 i mean i the president i think the first time in his first administration, did he not use that 1974 act for some of the tariffs with China?

25:32That's right. That's Section 301 of the 1974 act, and that's a very effective tool. It takes more time. Remember, we're in an emergency, so we had to address this quickly, so that's why we used the Emergency Act. Section 301, that's something we've already done with respect to shipbuilding this term. We have some other things in the works with respect to semiconductors and we can certainly expand the use of that as necessary. The panel that we did have in the international court, I think, was was a Reagan appointee, an Obama appointee, and if I got that right, and a Trump appointee. Is there a reason to think with the composition of the Supreme Court that you would get a reversal of that, Jameson?

26:16Oh, I think so. I mean, I do think that we're in a situation as the president doesn't have expressed that you know we have the judicial branch right now uh... you know feeling like they have you know some kind of authority over over matters that are clearly within the president's remit uh... not only constitutionally but as delegated by congress uh... you know for a court to get involved and say whether or not a president is appropriately response to a national emergency is is really just beyond the pale and i think the Supreme Court will recognize that. Do you think at this point that the most important thing that we're talking about, I mean, Europe's one thing, the EU, even India and Japan, is it all about China, Mr.