US Trade Rep Outlines Policy That Puts Middle Class First

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Wednesday declared the need for an economy that “emphasizes a large middle class that makes and grows, rather than a small elite that extracts, reallocates, and squanders.”

“Ultimately, to support a conservative society as conservatives, it’s been drilled into us to always lament that politics is downstream from culture, but I would say that even culture itself can often be downstream from economics and the systems that it sets up,” Greer contended in remarks at the National Conservative Conference in Washington.

“So, if we want a conservative culture, we have to create a conservative economic system,” he contended.

Greer, a lawyer and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a rising star in conservative policymaking. In his address, Greer outlined what he sees as the correct form of a conservative economic system; namely, one that prioritizes a production economy.

“A production economy is one that’s oriented around production, rather than consumption, as an end in itself,” Greer explained, adding:

America became great because, for most of our history, we had a production economy.

Greer grounded his political philosophy in what he characterized as reflections of what the Founding Fathers actually thought about trade policies.

“The Founders knew that other nations should not automatically benefit from free access to a market. The debates between Thomas Jefferson’s nation of farmers and Alexander Hamilton’s nation of manufacturers actually resulted in a practical compromise. We would be both, whether through toil on the land or labor in the factory. We would be a nation of producers, and even in their commitment to the yeoman farmer in his fields, the Jeffersonians recognized the need for industrial might to maintain our independence,” he explained. 

The U.S. trade representative cited the trade policy of the first U.S. secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. 

“Alexander Hamilton had argued that America needed tariffs and industrial policy to promote manufacturing and allow our young country to develop without being subject to the coercive economic policy of the British Empire. Eventually, this view was perfected by Henry Clay, and his unique model was called the American system,” he said. 

The trade representative also decried the trade policy of past decades, going so far as to characterize it as trading Americans’ birthright for instant gratification. 

“The heartland became a Rust Belt. The streets less safe. Our divide seemed to get sharper, and as we all know very well. People reverted into tribes, essentially, of identity. They latched on to ever-thinner slices of that identity to define themselves,” Greer said of the outcome of the trade policies of the past.

Greer concluded his speech by emphasizing American sovereignty and how that principle guides his work.

“Americans, we elect our own leaders, whether it’s in the White House, Congress, or state capitals, so we can make decisions for ourselves. We have autonomy, we have sovereignty, and that’s the work of a free and independent people, the work I support as U.S. trade representative, and it’s the work that I believe will set our country right,” he concluded.

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