President-elect Donald Trump is turning to two officials with experience navigating not only Washington but the key issues of income taxes and tariffs as he fills out his economic team.
Trump on Tuesday announced he has chosen international trade attorney Jamieson Greer to be his U.S. Trade representative and Kevin Hassett as director of the White House National Economic Council.
While Trump has in several cases nominated outsiders to key posts, these picks reflect a recognition that his reputation will likely hinge on restoring the public’s confidence in the economy.
The president-elect also announced a number of other key personnel choices, including Vince Haley, who led Trump’s speechwriting department in his first term, as director of the Domestic Policy Council.
Trump said in a statement that Greer was instrumental in his first term in imposing tariffs on China and others and replacing the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, “therefore making it much better for American Workers.”
Greer previously served as chief of staff to Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s former trade representative who is deeply skeptical of free trade. Greer is currently a partner at the King & Spalding law firm in Washington. He was not immediately available for comment.
If confirmed as trade representative, Greer would be responsible for negotiating directly with foreign governments on trade deals and disputes, as well as memberships in international trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization.
He told The New York Times in June that the view of Trump officials was that tariffs “can help support U.S. Manufacturing jobs in particular, especially to the extent that they’re remediating an unfair trade practice.”
His nomination comes a day after Trump promised to slap huge new tariffs on foreign goods entering the United States — including a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on goods from China — as one of his first executive orders.
As director of the White House National Economic Council, Hassett brings into Trump’s administration a major advocate for tax cuts.
Trump said Hassett “will play an important role in helping American families recover from the inflation that was unleashed by the Biden Administration” and that together they would “renew and improve” the 2017 tax cuts, many of which are set to expire after 2025.
Hassett, 62, served in the first Trump term as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. He has a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and worked at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute before joining the Trump White House in 2017.
As part of Hassett’s farewell announcement in 2019, Trump called him a “true friend” who did a “great job.” Hassett became a fellow at the Hoover Institution, which is located at Stanford University. He later returned to the administration to help deal with the pandemic.
In Trump’s second term, Hassett would join a White House seeking to preserve and expand its 2017 tax cuts at a time when deficit pressures are weighing on federal borrowing costs.
He has argued that the tax cuts helped to meaningfully boost household incomes. Inflation-adjusted median household incomes jumped more than $5,400 in 2019 to $81,210. But the tax cuts also came with higher budget deficits as any economic gains failed to offset lost revenues, setting up a challenge for the incoming Trump administration to manage the debt even as it cuts taxes and seeks to hold down inflation.
Also included in Tuesday’s nomination announcements was private investor, campaign donor and art collector John Phelan, chosen to serve as Navy secretary. Phelan co-founded MSD Capital, the private investment firm for Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. It is unclear whether Phelan served in the Navy or military.
