U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer on U.S.-China trade relations, Iran war impact and tariffs agenda
Speakers
Andrew Ross Sorkin — Host, Squawk Box
— CNBC Squawk Box host
Summary
- The US trade deficit with China in goods has declined by 30% over the past year, with January imports hitting their lowest levels since 2004.
- The US government is 40-80% finished building a portal to refund $165 billion in tariffs (plus interest) ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, expected to launch mid-next month.
- The USTR expects the ongoing war in Iran to conclude in a matter of "weeks," noting that Iranian missile/drone launches have decreased by 80-90%.
- A new wave of Section 301 investigations is moving quickly, targeting Chinese subsidies and excess capacity, which will likely lead to new tariffs.
- The US chemical and plastics industries hold a distinct feedstock advantage over China, as Chinese production relies heavily on disrupted Iranian oil imports.
Trade Ideas
"We want to make sure that we continue to get the rare earths we need for our manufacturing base..." The USTR explicitly highlights rare earths as a critical vulnerability in the US-China economic relationship. As the US aggressively pursues Section 301 tariffs and broader decoupling (with imports already at 2004 lows), securing domestic rare earth supply chains will become a matter of national security. Domestic producers will likely receive massive government backing, subsidies, or premium pricing to ensure the US manufacturing base survives a total trade war. LONG domestic rare earth miners as strategic, government-backed assets in the ongoing geopolitical decoupling. China floods the global market with artificially cheap rare earths to bankrupt Western producers before protective tariffs can be fully implemented.
"I think what you want to look is what are the feed stocks doing in China. Because some of these hydrocarbons go into the plastics industry, the chemicals industry in China. I think we're more resilient on that front because we have a lot of domestic feedstocks." The Iran conflict is disrupting cheap oil flows to China, which raises the input costs for Chinese chemical and plastics manufacturers. US chemical companies utilize domestic natural gas liquids (NGLs) as feedstocks. Because US domestic energy is abundant and insulated from Middle East shocks, US chemical producers gain a massive margin and pricing advantage over their Chinese competitors. LONG US chemical and plastics manufacturers who benefit from structurally cheaper domestic feedstocks while international competitors face supply shocks. The Iran war ends faster than expected (Greer predicts "weeks"), which would normalize global oil prices and erase the relative feedstock cost advantage for US producers.
"The government is somewhere between 40 and 80% towards building a system to refund the more than $165 billion that in tariffs that were collected that were then ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. They expect that system to be up and running by the middle of next month." Large-cap US retailers and consumer goods importers paid the vast majority of these tariffs. A $165 billion refund pool, complete with interest payments, represents a massive, unexpected cash windfall. While the USTR suggests companies should pay this out as worker bonuses, public corporations are highly likely to allocate these funds toward share buybacks, special dividends, or bottom-line earnings beats. LONG major US retail importers ahead of the portal launch to capture the equity upside of impending cash inflows. Political pressure, union demands, or new legislation forces companies to distribute the windfall entirely to workers, or the Treasury finds a legal loophole to delay the payouts.
"If we find that countries have been involved in unfair trading practices like subsidies, excess capacity... we can quantify that harm to U.S. commerce and then try to resolve that issue... you can impose a tariff or fee or something like that. We're trying to move very quickly." The US has already successfully reduced its goods deficit with China by 30% in one year. A new, fast-tracked wave of Section 301 tariffs targeting excess capacity will further compress margins for Chinese exporters. This accelerates the shifting of global supply chains away from China, weighing heavily on broad Chinese equity indices that rely on export-driven growth. SHORT Chinese large-cap equities as the trade war enters a formalized, aggressive new tariff phase. The upcoming meeting in Paris results in a surprise trade detente, sparking a massive short-covering rally in Chinese stocks.
Up Next
This CNBC video, published March 13, 2026, features Jamieson Greer, Andrew Ross Sorkin discussing MP, DOW, LYB, CE, WMT, TGT, HD, FXI, MCHI. 4 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers: Jamieson Greer, Andrew Ross Sorkin · Tickers: MP, DOW, LYB, CE, WMT, TGT, HD, FXI, MCHI