From PBS NewsHour.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., pressed U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Tuesday about President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs plan, challenging the idea that the administration would be able to hit a Wednesday midnight deadline while negotiating with 50 countries and without a better plan to handle the negative effects on U.S. tourism.

Trump announced the tariffs plan last week in an event he called "Liberation Day," saying they were aimed at resolving a longtime trade deficit with partners around the world. Some Republicans have defended the tariffs, levied across dozens of countries, as a way to create leverage. Democrats, economists and other countries have blasted the plan, emphasizing deep and negative effects for U.S. consumers, as well as wider geopolitical consequences. Several economists have said the formula the White House used to develop the tariffs, which were much higher than expected, is flawed and misunderstands some key trade metrics.

Cortez Masto said she was concerned that Greer was not being realistic nor "intellectually honest" about the time it takes to negotiate trade agreements. She asked Greer about his involvement in United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement during Trump’s first administration.

"How long did it take to negotiate that agreement, the USMCA that you were part of?" Cortez Masto asked.

"We did it at breakneck speed. We did it in about two years," Greer said.

"Two years. And now you’re telling us you have nearly 50 countries coming to you, approaching you to enter in a negotiation, and you think that you can do that overnight?" Cortez Masto said.

The senator said she was offended by Greer’s suggestion in his opening statement that "we must accept self-inflicted economic pain" to "become an economy based on producing real goods and services."

"What does that mean? What does that mean to my service industry and every service industry across this country that relies on tourism and travel, that is the backbone really of part of our billion-dollar economy?" said Cortez Masto, whose home state generated $100 billion from tourism last year, according to a recent report.

"What do I tell them? That they just have to suck it up? That they’re not really of this real services — that you have another idea for the jobs that they should engage in?" she added.

"Essentially what I’m hearing is we should have the status quo, we should keep the $1.2 trillion dollar trade deficit that Biden left us with and I don’t think that’s adequate," Greer said.

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