Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

26. Trade · Minor · Contested — excluded from counts

Appoint a USTR committed to fair, balanced, and reciprocal trade

Done

794 26. Trade · from “The Case for Fair Trade”

“The Trump Administration broke this globalist Republican tradition by appointing as USTR attorney Robert E. Lighthizer, who not only had a keen understanding of the various legal levers a President can use to advance trade policy, but also was committed to the President’s fair, balanced, and reciprocal trade agenda. The next Administration should make every effort to find someone with that understanding and that commitment to fill this position.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    The Senate confirmed Jamieson Greer as United States Trade Representative, 56-43 (Record Vote 94), and USTR's own biography records that Greer "returns to USTR after previously serving as Chief of Staff to Ambassador Robert Lighthizer during President Trump's first term", where he was "deeply involved in the Administration's implementation of tariffs on China" and in the USMCA negotiation. He then ran the section 232 and section 301 program through 2026. The ask's checkable half - fill the post - is delivered and dated, and it carries the Status. **Unassessed clause:** the Quote asks for someone with Lighthizer's "keen understanding of the various legal levers" and his commitment "to the President's fair, balanced, and reciprocal trade agenda", and asks the next Administration to "find someone with that understanding and that commitment". Both name qualities of a person, and this site does not assess an appointee's personal qualities (GLOSSARY.md, *Unassessed clause*). Done records that a USTR was appointed; it makes no claim about his understanding or his commitments. This item stood at partial from 2026-09-01 to 2026-09-06 under the earlier disposition rule, which the *Unassessed clause* decision supersedes wherever the clause names a quality of a person; the change is on /corrections with reason `rule`.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

src/data/people.json was checked first, as the trail map directs for an appoint ask: none of the 322 credited people holds this office, and Peter Navarro, the author of the Fair Trade essay this Quote comes from, carries no Current office in the roster either.

Rung moved 2026-09-06 (read-queue ticket 06, owner decision 2): partial back to done. The 2026-09-01 cap rested entirely on the Quote’s commitment clause. The owner’s Unassessed clause ruling of 2026-09-06 settles that class the other way for clauses about a person: the ask is leveled on its checkable half and the quality clause is recorded as unassessed rather than held open. Nothing about the record changed, so the Correction’s Reason is rule, not error. This item is contested: true and sits in the Contested set-aside, so no Status Roll-up moves with it; the item page does.

#2095 is deliberately not moved with it. Its Quote asks that the post be filled “wisely” - a claim about how an act was performed rather than about a person’s qualities - and the owner’s list of eleven appoint asks carrying an unassessed clause does not include it. The 3b disposition rule still governs #2095, and docs/agents/research-playbook.md now says which rule reaches which.

One date discrepancy, recorded because it is the kind of thing that looks like an error later: the USTR biography page says Greer “was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 20th United States Trade Representative on February 27, 2025”, while the Senate’s own roll call is dated February 26, 2025 at 12:00 PM. The event is dated on the roll call, per playbook 4. No rung turns on it, so it is not in the spot-check register.

Action
appoint
Object
United States Trade Representative
ID
2094