In a 20-minute interview at the National Archives, Greer offered a broad defense of US trade policy, including:

Whether export controls are on the table during Trump’s China visit: “No. ... I’ll just elaborate just a little bit: Export controls, these are national security decisions made by the United States of America, made by our government. The Chinese always raise these things. They always talk about these things. But it’s something that we decide as a government.”

Critiques that the Trump administration could be reverse-engineering its Section 301 trade investigations: “We don’t prejudge it, right? It’s a legal process. … But the reality is, the president’s tariffs he did on an emergency basis, the temporary [Section 122] tariffs he has now, and the [Section 301] ones we’re doing now, they always have the same basic issue, which is massive imbalances, driven in many cases by unfair trading practices and non-reciprocal terms of trade with the United States.”

Whether he’s concerned by declining manufacturing construction spending: “There’s a strong demand signal for manufacturing labor.” Greer pointed to indicators like rising manufacturing workers’ wages and overtime hours: “We’re really positive about this.” He also called out the pharmaceutical industry, which he said “has been incredibly responsive to the call to reindustrialize.”

Whether the Trump administration anticipated China’s rare earths embargo: “Well, we’ve always known they have that leverage. We’ve always known that.”

How he’ll measure success in a year: “I have three metrics I’m looking at. One of them is, what is the direction in the US trade deficit in goods? … The other one is, we want to see increases in real wages, right? … And then the last metric is the one that I’m quite focused on, and this is having more manufacturing as a share of GDP.”