“The real action is always backstage. The front stage is for show.”
— Old diplomatic proverb, probably whispered with a smirk in Geneva
May 14, 2025 — May 14, 2025—It’s tempting to believe the second Trump administration has plunged trade policy into chaos. Headlines bark about tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, European regulators cry foul, and Japanese negotiators quietly signal concern through diplomatic channels.
It all plays out like a television drama, equal parts choreography and crisis.
But behind the scenes, beyond the reach of cameras and official communiqués, a far more strategic, possibly transformative campaign is underway.
That campaign was on full display in Geneva this past weekend, where Jamieson Greer — former Chief Trade Counsel under Robert Lighthizer and now once again a key architect of the administration’s trade strategy — met with Chinese officials in a session described by insiders not as a negotiation, but as a recalibration.
Trump’s tariffs and their shocking percentages grab all the headline attention, but the nitty legal work behind the scenes is what’ll make the trade war win stick. (Source: Statista.com)
Greer, known for his surgically precise legal approach to trade policy, is not interested in grand statements or theatrical gestures.
His aim, according to those familiar with the talks, is simple: to build mechanisms that lock in behavioral change, not just extract promises. The biggest change? Removing non-tariff barriers, or NTBs.
If anything, it’s more important than tariffs themselves. In Greer’s own words, offered at a recent Santiago Capital roundtable, “tariffs are the noise; NTBs are the system.”
That sentiment echoed through Geneva, where the discussions were anything but conventional. Instead of haggling over tariff percentages, Greer’s team laid out a menu of reforms to China’s approval processes, customs procedures, and product standards — policies long used to quietly exclude U.S. goods and services without triggering WTO complaints.
The Chinese, accustomed to symbolic demands and theatrical rebukes, were reportedly caught off guard by the specificity. Timetables. Certification metrics. Dispute triggers.
These weren’t threats — they were legal instruments, drafted to outlast the Trump administration itself. So much for any plan to simply outlast Trump’s second term.
Greer’s method is deliberate, grounded in law rather than ideology. In one exchange, he reportedly presented a clause requiring public transparency for China’s industrial subsidy databases — an ask that, while technical, would expose the very foundations of Beijing’s state-capitalist model.
That’s the genius of Greer’s approach. By going after the machinery, not just the output, he’s aiming to disable the underlying system that has enabled years of structural imbalance.
This morning, in a segment on Fox Business, the British gadfly, Nigel Farage, played his role as provocateur-in-chief. But beneath his usual theatrics was a piercing critique that resonated.
The United States, Farage argued, “has been taken advantage of by the European Union not just through punitive tariffs, but through outright bans and arbitrary standards that make American competition effectively illegal.”
He cited the long-standing ban on hormone-treated beef and the de facto exclusion of American tech platforms under the guise of GDPR compliance. “It’s protectionism,” Farage said, “just dressed up in moral language.”
Farage is not wrong. And he’s not alone in saying it.
Inside The Bespoke Trade Deals
In the closed-door drafting rooms where these bespoke agreements are forged, the process is anything but glamorous. It begins with forensic regulatory analysis — an unspooling of thousands of pages of foreign legal code to identify not just what’s written, but how it’s applied.
From there, U.S. negotiators — many of them lawyers like Greer — build mirror frameworks, clauses that force reciprocity or trigger penalties when standards diverge. These are not broad-stroke free trade ideals. These are tactical instruments.
A key part of the strategy is bilateralism. Multilateral frameworks, with their glacial pace and need for consensus, have proven ill-equipped to deal with the evolving subtlety of modern trade barriers.
In bilateral talks, there’s leverage.
A clear party holding the larger stick. And in this case, that’s the United States — the largest consumer market in the world.
Access is a privilege, not a guarantee. Greer’s team understands this. Each agreement now functions as a gate, not just an invitation. Behind each gate, new terms are being written that may define the next era of global commerce well.
The irony, of course, is that while these negotiations reshape the landscape of international trade, most of the media remains transfixed on the tariff headlines.
But the real game is unfolding in the shadows — through regulatory audits, mutual recognition agreements, and legally binding transparency requirements that, if enforced, could finally pierce the veil of “free trade” as practiced by America’s rivals.
For investors, particularly those who’ve long held positions in sectors battered by this system — manufacturing, agriculture, industrials — the implications are significant. These deals don’t merely open doors; they disarm traps.
If American companies can export without navigating a Kafkaesque gauntlet of inspections, fees, and ambiguous standards, we could see earnings growth not from subsidies or bailouts, but from restored access.
If Trump were to truly “win” the trade war, this is how it would happen.
Not through headline tariff rates. Not through fireworks or fanfare. But through a network of tightly crafted, fiercely enforced legal agreements that redraw the rules quietly, permanently.
China’s exporters would find fewer loopholes.
European regulators would be compelled to justify every ban. Japanese ministries would have to explain why an American car part takes six months to approve.
It wouldn’t be a revolution. It would be a return to symmetry.
What remains to be seen is whether the U.S. can sustain the discipline required to enforce what it writes.
But for now, the blueprint is clear. While tariffs play on the public stage, the real battle — the one that matters, the one that endures — is being fought on the silent battlefield of non-tariff trade barriers.
And for the first time in decades, it appears someone knows how to win it.
Right now, we’re on a 90-day pause with China to see if Greer and his associates can make some balanced trade regulations stick for real. We’ll also be keen to know if they can put some teeth on the U.S.’s innovative IP and patents. Or some meaningful escape plan from the Yuan Trap.
That’d be a coup.
~ Addison Wiggin
The Grey Swan
P.S. Heard in this morning’s editorial meeting:
Andrew Packer: “Maybe Trump should ask for Europe to start repaying the Marshall Plan money… claim it was a loan earning interest the past 80 years.”
Addison: “Reparations! Oooh… wonder if there’s some parallel with Japan and Korea… U.S. ROI on Pax Americana…”
Andrew, with a grin: “Right, figure out what’s on the other side of the multi-billion-dollar investment commitments these countries are making in the U.S…. or maybe explain they never met their defense spending targets to be included in NATO?”
Your thoughts? Please send them here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com
