WITA’s Friday Exchange: I Know it When I See it: Tariff “Gerrymandering” and Taxing Comparative Advantage
In the latest episode of the Friday Exchange, our trade insiders unpack the administration’s evolving trade strategy from IEEPA tariffs, to new 122, 232 and 301 tariffs. Our trade experts also discuss new rules for calculating steel and aluminum tariffs on things like whipped cream, beer and autos, and are the new tariffs driving up costs and confusion for manufacturers? Our speakers also discuss new pharmaceutical tariffs, and what does “excess capacity” actually mean? Or is it like what Potter Stewart said about pornography: “I know it when I see it”?
Featured Speakers:
Introduction: Kenneth Levinson, CEO, WITA – The International Trade Association
Ed Gresser, Vice President & Director for Trade & Global Markets, Progressive Policy Institute; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics – author of the Trade Fact of the Week
Kate Kalutkiewicz, Senior Managing Director, McLarty Associates; former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for International Trade, National Economic Council, in the first Trump Administration
Dawn Shackleford, President at Looking Glass Trade, LLC; former Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations, Department of Commerce; former Assistant USTR for WTO & Multilateral Affairs
Joe Damond, Non-resident Senior Associate at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Southeast Asia program; former Deputy Assistant USTR for Asia
Watch the Video on YouTube | Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Recorded at 9:00 AM US/ET on 04/17/2026 | WITA
WITA’s USMCA Review Series: Driving North American Trade
At this USMCA Review Series webinar, we looked at the importance of the U.S.–Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the U.S. automotive sector. Our speakers discussed whether the Agreement succeeded in meeting its goals of driving greater investment in manufacturing and jobs in the U.S.; what it has meant for employment across the sector; and how it has helped bring automotive supply chains back to the U.S. and North America. Speakers also discussed where improvements could be made as part of the review, including how to modernize the Agreement for the U.S. to better compete with China.
Featured Speakers:
Matt Blunt, President, American Automotive Policy Council
Cody Lusk, President and CEO, American International Automobile Dealers Association
Paul McCarthy, President & CEO, MEMA – the Vehicle Suppliers Association
Jennifer Safavian, President & CEO, Autos Drive America
Moderator: Arun Venkataraman, Partner, Covington; former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service
04/16/2026 | WITA
A Great Wall Around China
Daniel Kishi is a Senior Policy Advisor at American Compass, and Co-author of the Understanding America newsletter, from Commonplace.
Tariffs on Chinese goods are not effective if those goods can still enter the United States under another label. If a product made in China can be rerouted through a third country, lightly transformed, stamped “Made in Malaysia,” and sent into the U.S. market, then even the highest tariffs will not have the intended effect.
Jamieson Greer understood that problem before he had the power to directly address it. In May 2024, he testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He was a private sector trade attorney at the time but had previously served as chief of staff to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during President Donald Trump’s first term, where he helped design and execute the Section 301 investigation into China’s intellectual property practices. That investigation led to tariffs on Chinese goods that today range from 7.5% to 100%, depending on the product category, and remain in full effect. In his testimony, Greer warned that the Section 301 tariffs “may need to be modified to prevent third-country workarounds by extending the effect of the measures to imports from Chinese headquartered companies or adjusting the rule of origin for goods subject to the Section 301 tariffs.” He urged Congress to limit preferential duty treatment for goods with Chinese content or produced by Chinese-owned companies
Almost two years later, the New York Times profiled Greer—now serving in the same cabinet post once held by his former boss—as “the quiet architect of Trump’s global trade war.” What the profile did not fully explore was what the architect had been building: not just a set of bilateral deals on tariffs and market access, but a China containment architecture embedded in the administration’s so-called Agreements on Reciprocal Trade.
High tariffs on China have reduced bilateral trade flows. The U.S. goods deficit with China fell by nearly a third in 2025, while China’s share of U.S. imports has fallen to roughly the same level as before it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. But China’s overall trade surplus—a consequence of its external imbalances driven by weak domestic demand and export-oriented industrial policy—has not shrunk; it has instead been rerouted. China recorded a historic $1.19 trillion trade surplus last year, with exports surging into Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. That diversion—which has intensified during the first quarter of 2026—is pressuring third countries to choose whether to absorb China’s overcapacity at the expense of their own industrial bases or to join the United States in strengthening their trade defenses against it.
04/09/2026 | Daniel Kishi | Commonplace
The Cost of Chaos
Chris Padilla, a Senior Advisor at Brunswick Group and former Vice President at IBM, previously served as Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, and in senior positions at the Department of State and USTR.
A little more than a year ago, the Trump administration announced sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs with considerable fanfare, promising to rebalance global trade, revive American manufacturing, and restore economic sovereignty. The tariffs were framed as a bold corrective, a long-overdue reckoning with decades of unfair trade practices by U.S. trading partners.
Twelve months later, the history and the economic data tell a more complicated story. U.S. trade policy became a melodrama of haphazard implementation, arbitrary exceptions, frequent walk-backs, and pervasive uncertainty for American businesses, farmers, and consumers.
Chaos has a cost. It overtook the administration’s policy objectives, depressed manufacturing investment, and needlessly antagonized allies. While tariff leverage was used constructively to win new market access in some countries, the tariffs also contributed to slower economic growth and sticky (though so far not alarming) price inflation.
From the beginning, the Liberation Day tariffs were a hot mess. Only one week after being unveiled, they were suspended; four months later, they were imposed at lower levels; seven months after that, they were struck down by the Supreme Court; and finally, they were replaced with a temporary stopgap levy meant to buy time for pretextual trade “investigations” whose sole purpose is to impose the tariffs once again. In the meantime, the U.S. Treasury owes approximately $166 billion in refunds, plus interest, to more than 300,000 importers
04/12/2026 | Christopher Padilla | Substack
The WTO Can Be a Good Supporting Actor on Trade
Wendy Cutler is a Senior Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute, and a former Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer could not have been clearer regarding his views on the World Trade Organization (WTO). Having just returned from a critical four-day meeting of the world’s trade ministers in Cameroon, he did not mince words in a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, calling the WTO “ineffective and dysfunctional” and on a path to irrelevance.
To many observers, his cutting words were not a surprise. In this and other recent engagements, he has consistently raised concerns regarding the core WTO principles and rules governing a range of issues, including decision- making, developing country status, the most-favoured nation (MFN) approach, and dispute settlement.
He has also emphasised that the WTO is ill-equipped to address the cutting- edge matters facing the international trading world today, leading the United States to pursue its own path on trade policy outside of the WTO.
THE WTO IS IN TROUBLE
Ambassador Greer makes points that are hard to refute in principle. We cannot deny that the WTO is facing a myriad of challenges and has been unsuccessful in delivering on needed reforms.
Some of this was inevitable. Consensus-based decision-making worked well for many years when countries shared trade liberalisation objectives and there were way fewer members. Fast forward to today. The WTO membership has grown to 166 economies with diverse interests, competing priorities and geo- political differences. Critics will also claim that the US deserves its share of the blame for weakening the WTO by effectively shutting down the dispute settlement process.
04/15/2026 | Wendy Cutler | The Straits Times
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