Trump is now senile and incompetent. He spends 90% of his time golfing or watching TV and is no longer responsible for running the country. The buffoons around him - Hegseth, Vance, etc - run policy decisions. Whoever has the senile old fucker's ear from time to time pretty much runs the country.
If a traitor tells him that 90% of Canadians want to join the US as the "51st state", the orange dotard moron believes him and that bullshit becomes American state policy.
All of Trump's economic policy comes directly from Navarro, who is a discredited economist, largely ridiculed as eccentric and incompetent in his own field. Navarro is the asshole who originated the obsession with balance of trade.
Here is Navarro's wiki bio and what it says.
On December 4, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced Navarro would be the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing in his second term.[167] He is one of the few officials from Trump's first term to return for his second term.[168] He assumed office on January 20, 2025.[169]
President Donald Trump signing Executive Orders, February 10, 2025, in the Oval Office. Navarro is standing behind Trump.
In January 2025, amidst Trump's threats to put tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Navarro called NAFTA a "catastrophe" in an interview and said because "China was so much worse," it was ignored "how bad NAFTA was." He also linked America's problems with illegal immigration to NAFTA, saying since the US started exporting corn to Mexico, many Mexican agricultural workers lost their jobs, sending some to the US.[169] In February 2025, Navarro and Stephen Miller were the leading officials in the economic discussions regarding the imposition of tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico.[170][171] Navarro was a key official behind Trump's decision to adopt a trade policy memo in the first day of the presidency, his decision to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S., as well as his decision to adopt so-called "reciprocal tariffs" for every country.[172]
The Financial Times reported in February 2025 that Navarro proposed expelling Canada from the Five Eyes.[173] A few days later, The Daily Telegraph reported that Navarro pushed US negotiators to start discussions with Canada about reworking and redrawing the US-Canada border, which reportedly prompted Canada to cease negotiating with the United States until Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer were confirmed to their positions by the Senate.[174] Navarro was a key official behind Trump's "reciprocal tariff" policy announced in April;[175] ING Group noted that plans for the policy appeared to align with Navarro's section of Project 2025, titled "The Case for Fair Trade", published in April 2023.[176] Bloomberg News reported that Navarro urged Trump to adopt a 25% tax on imports or "reciprocal" tariffs based on trade deficits; the latter idea was adopted as part of Trump's announcement.[177]
On April 5, 2025 Navarro was criticized by Trump advisor Elon Musk, who questioned his educational qualifications from Harvard on X and wrote "He ain’t built shit."[178] In response, Navarro said Musk is not a "car manufacturer". On April 8, Musk responded by calling Navarro "a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks", and said he should consult "the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara".[179]
Views
Main articles: International trade, Commercial policy, and Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign
Navarro speaking with attendees at the Believers Summit at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, July 26, 2024
Navarro has been a staunch critic of relations and trade with China and a strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits. He has attacked Germany, Japan, and China for their currency manipulation. An advocate of protectionist policies, he has called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, setting high tariffs, and repatriating global supply chains. He was a fierce opponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.[180]
Navarro's views on trade are considered outside the mainstream of economic thought.[181] According to Bloomberg News, Navarro had "roots as a mainstream economist"; he voiced support for free trade in his 1984 book The Policy Game. He changed his positions as he saw "the globalist erosion of the American economy" develop.[3] He would later become a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[182] According to Politico, Navarro's economic theories are "considered fringe" by his fellow economists.[183] A New Yorker reporter described Navarro's views on trade and China as so radical "that, even with his assistance, I was unable to find another economist who fully agrees with them."[184]
The Economist described Navarro as having "oddball views".[185] The George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen has described Navarro as "one of the most versatile and productive American economists of the last few decades", but Cowen noted that he disagreed with his views on trade, which he claimed to go "against a strong professional consensus."[183] University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers described Navarro's views as "far outside the mainstream," noting that "he endorses few of the key tenets of" the economics profession.[1] According to Lee Branstetter, economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University and trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Navarro "was never a part of the group of economists who ever studied the global free-trade system... He doesn't publish in journals. What he's writing and saying right now has nothing to do with what he got his Harvard Ph.D. in... He doesn't do research that would meet the scientific standards of that community."[186] Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, described a tax and trade paper written by Navarro and Wilbur Ross for Trump as "a complete misunderstanding of international trade, on their part."[39]
In 2023, Navarro co-authored the chapter on trade for the ninth edition of the Heritage Foundation's book Mandate for Leadership, which provides the policy agenda for Project 2025.[187] The chapter, called "the case for fair trade" is part of a dueling chapter on trade policy in which Navarro argues for tariffs and trade restrictions while other authors argue for free trade. The chapter details Navarro's plans to counter China through trade policy.[188] In the chapter, Navarro writes "America’s record on trade — specifically America’s chronic and ever-expanding trade deficit — says that America is the globe’s biggest trade loser and a victim of unfair, unbalanced, and nonreciprocal trade".[168] His view is that the tariff adjustments will spur the economy in the long run and yield enough revenue to pay for tax cuts.[189]
Political positions
Navarro's political affiliations and policy positions are "hotly disputed and across the spectrum." While he lived in Massachusetts studying for his PhD at Harvard, he was a registered Democrat. When he moved to California in 1986, he was initially registered as nonpartisan and became a registered Republican in 1989.[190] By 1991, he had again re-registered as an Independent, and carried that affiliation during the 1992 San Diego mayoral election. Around this time, he still considered himself a conservative Republican.[191] Navarro rejoined the Democratic Party in 1994 and remained a Democrat during each of his subsequent political campaigns.[190] In 1996, while he was running for Congress, Navarro was endorsed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and spoke at the 1996 Democratic Convention, saying, "I'm proud to be carrying the Clinton-Gore banner." He positioned himself as a "strong environmentalist and a progressive on social issues such as choice, gay rights, and religious freedom."[13][192][193]
Navarro supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008.[12] Navarro supported President Barack Obama's phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, the adoption of wind power, and carbon taxes in order to stop global warming.[194] During the 2016 presidential election, Navarro described himself as "a Reagan Democrat and a Trump Democrat abandoned by my party."[195] Despite this, Navarro was critical of Ronald Reagan's defense spending, called GDP growth during the administration a "Failure of Reaganomics"[196] and described the "10-5-3" tax proposal as "a very large corporate subsidy."[197] During the early stage of the Trump administration, Navarro was still known to be a Democrat, but by February 2018 he had again re-registered as a Republican.[70]
Border adjustment tax
Navarro supports a tax policy called "border adjustment", which, as commonly used in the VATs of most countries, taxes all imports at the domestic rate while rebating tax on exports, essentially transforming taxes from taxes on production to taxes on consumption.[186] In response to criticism that the border adjustment tax could hurt U.S. companies and put jobs at risk, Navarro called it "fake news".[186]
Criticism of China
Navarro joins U.S. president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping at their bilateral meeting, June 29, 2019.
Navarro is seen as very hawkish on China. According to The Guardian, Navarro sees China as a "despicable, parasitic, brutal, brass-knuckled, crass, callous, amoral, ruthless and totally totalitarian imperialist power that reigns over the world’s leading cancer factory, its most prolific propaganda mill and the biggest police state and prison on the face of the earth".[198] According to Politico, "Navarro is perhaps the most extreme advocate in Washington, and maybe in all of economics, for an aggressive stance toward China."[183] According to Vox, "Aided by cartoonish and frequently offensive stereotypes of the Chinese national character, Navarro tends to believe that there is something fundamentally underhanded and evil about China, regardless of any evidence to the contrary".[199]
Navarro focused his attention on China in the mid-2000s.[200] According to Chaos Under Heaven, a book by Josh Rogin, Navarro was part of a group of officials that wanted Trump to "speed the downfall" of the Chinese Communist Party and that "believed in economic nationalism, the return of manufacturing from abroad, and the protection of domestic industries, even at the expense of free trade".[201] His first publication on the subject is the 2006 book The Coming China Wars.[202] Navarro has said that he started to examine China when he noticed that his former students were losing jobs, concluding that China was at fault.[200]
In Politico's description of the book, "Navarro uses military language to refer to China's trade policies, referring to its 'conquest' of the world's export markets, which has 'vaporized literally millions of manufacturing jobs and driven down wages.' ... China's aspirations are so insatiable, he claims, that eventually there will be a clash over 'our most basic of all needs — bread, water, and air.'"[202] Navarro has described the entry of China to the World Trade Organization as one of the United States' biggest mistakes.[200] To respond to the threat posed to the United States, Navarro has advocated for 43% tariffs, the repudiation of trade pacts, major increases in military expenditures, and strengthened military ties with Taiwan.[202][200] The New York Times notes that "a wide range of economists have warned that curtailing trade with China would damage the American economy, forcing consumers to pay higher prices for goods and services."[24] Navarro has reportedly also encouraged Trump to enact a 25% tariff on Chinese steel imports, something that "trade experts worry... would upend global trade practices and cause countries to retaliate, potentially leading to a trade war".[50]
Navarro has said that a large part of China's competitive advantage over the United States stems from unfair trade practices.[21] Navarro has criticized China for pollution, poor labor standards, government subsidies, producing "contaminated, defective and cancerous" exports, currency manipulation, and theft of US intellectual property.[21][203] In his 2012 documentary, Navarro said that China caused the loss of 57,000 US factories and 25 million jobs. Navarro has maintained that China manipulates its currency, and on August 5, 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department officially designated China as a "currency manipulator."[204][200]
Of the more than a dozen China specialists contacted by Foreign Policy, most either did not know of Navarro or had only interacted with him briefly.[200] Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago professor of Chinese History, said that his "recollection is that [Navarro] generally avoided people who actually knew something about the country."[200] Columnist Gordon G. Chang was the only China watcher contacted by Foreign Policy who defended Navarro, but even he noted that he disagreed with Navarro's claims of currency manipulation, opposition to the TPP, and calls for high tariffs.[200] James McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said that Navarro's books and documentary on China "have close to zero credibility with people who know the country," and are filled with "hyperbole, inaccuracies" and a "cartoonish caricature of China that he puts out."[200] Some of Navarro's views on China fit within the mainstream, such as criticism of Chinese currency manipulation (pre-2015), concern that China's rapid ascension to the World Trade Organization harmed the Rust Belt, and criticism of China's weak environmental regulations and poor labor standards.[14][21]
On January 20, 2021, the Chinese government imposed sanctions against Navarro and 27 other Trump administration officials who "planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves, gravely interfered in China's internal affairs, undermined China's interests, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-U.S. relations". The sanctions ban them from entering China, including Hong Kong and Macau, and restrict companies and institutions associated with them from doing business in China.[205]
"Ron Vara"
In six of his books about China, Navarro quotes a "Ron Vara", whom he describes as a China hawk and former Harvard PhD doctoral student in economics who says Sinophobic things about China and the Chinese such as "you've got to be nuts to eat Chinese food" and "only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel".[206] An investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that no such person existed and that Ron Vara (an anagram of Navarro) appeared to represent views that Navarro himself held.[206][207] Navarro has admitted to making up the character, an author surrogate, and quoting him in his books.[207]
Economist Glenn Hubbard, who co-authored Seeds of Destruction with Navarro,[208] has said he was not aware that Vara was fictional, and that he disapproved of Navarro attributing information to a fictional source.[209] In December 2019, a memo purportedly written by Ron Vara began circulating in Washington, D.C. The memo highlighted the "Keep Tariff Argument" and the use of tariffs against China a few days before implementing an additional 15% tariff on $160 billion of Chinese-made goods. Navarro later confirmed that he had written the memo.[210] In response to the "Ron Vara" character, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China spokesperson Hua Chunying accused Navarro of "smearing China with lies".[211]
Navarro argues that the decline in US manufacturing jobs is chiefly due to "unfair trade practices and bad trade deals. And if you don't believe that, just go to the booming factories in Germany, in Japan, in Korea, in China, in Malaysia, in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in Italy — every place that we're running deficits with."[216] However, many economists attribute the decline in manufacturing jobs chiefly to automation and other innovations that allow manufacturing firms to produce more goods with fewer workers, rather than trade.[216][217]
Navarro has been a proponent of strengthening the manufacturing sector's role in the national economy: "We envision a more Germany-style economy, where 20 percent of our workforce is in manufacturing. ... And we're not talking about banging tin in the back room."[186] The New York Times notes that "experts on manufacturing ... doubt that the government can significantly increase factory employment, noting that mechanization is the major reason fewer people are working in factories."[24]
Opposition to trade deals
Navarro has criticized the United States–South Korea Free Trade Agreement.[218] Navarro called for the United States to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement, and tried to convince Trump to initiate a withdrawal.[50] Working together with former AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, a revised NAFTA agreement was put in place during the Trump administration.
Navarro opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Navarro said in an April 2015 op-ed, "To woo us, their spinmeisters boast the TPP will spur American exports to stimulate sorely needed economic growth. In truth, the American economy will suffer severely. This is because the TPP will hammer two main drivers of economic growth — domestic investment and 'net exports.'"[219] Navarro said in March 2017 that TPP "would have been a 'death knell' to America's auto and vehicle parts industry that we "urgently need to bring back to full life.'"[203] “Australia is just killing our aluminium market,” Mr Navarro told CNN. “President Trump says no, no, we’re not, we’re not doing that any more. Our aluminium industry is on its back.” “What they do is they just flood our markets,” Mr Navarro said of Australia's aluminium exports to the United States.[This quote needs a citation] Australia is not the biggest supplier to the United States, ranked only 17th for exports of steel to America and eighth in exports of aluminium over the past 10 years.
Trade as a national security risk
Navarro has framed trade as a national security risk.[202][220] Navarro has characterized foreign purchases of U.S. companies as a threat to national security, but according to NPR, this is "a fringe view that puts him at odds with the vast majority of economists."[221] Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin noted that the US government already reviews foreign purchases of companies with military or strategic value, and has on occasion rejected such deals.[221] Irwin said that Navarro had not substantiated his claim with any evidence.[221]
Navarro has also said that the United States has "already begun to lose control of [its] food supply chain", which according to NPR, "sounded pretty off-the-wall to a number of economists" who noted that the United States is a massive exporter of food.[221] Dermot Hayes, an agribusiness economist at Iowa State University, described Navarro's statement as "uninformed".[221] Navarro has called for repatriating global supply chains.[202][203] According to Politico's Jacob Heilbrunn, such a move "would be enormously costly and take years to execute".[202] Navarro criticized the outsourcing of critical materials — like the production of essential medical supplies — to China, in light of the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.[222]
Trade deficits
Main article: Balance of trade
Navarro is a proponent of the notion that trade deficits are bad in and of themselves, a view which is widely rejected by trade experts and economists.[223][224][225] In a white paper co-authored with Wilbur Ross, Navarro stated, "when a country runs a trade deficit by importing more than it exports, this subtracts from growth."[226] In a Wall Street Journal op-ed defending his views, Navarro stated, "If we are able to reduce our trade deficits through tough, smart negotiations, we should be able to increase our growth."[227] Harvard University economics professor Gregory Mankiw has said that Navarro's views on the trade deficit are based on the kind of mistakes that "even a freshman at the end of ec 10 knows."[224][228] Tufts University professor Daniel W. Drezner said about Navarro's op-ed, "as someone who's written on this topic I could not for the life of me understand his reasoning".[229] According to Tyler Cowen, "close to no one" in the economics profession agrees with Navarro's idea that a trade deficit is bad in and of itself.[230] Nobel laureate Angus Deaton described Navarro's attitude on trade deficits as "an old-fashioned mercantilist position."[225] The Economist has described Navarro's views on the trade deficit as "dodgy economics",[21] while the Financial Times has described them as "poor economics".[231] Economists Scott Sumner, Olivier Blanchard,[203] and Phil Levy[232] have also criticized Navarro's views on the trade deficit. Dan Ikenson, director of the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, goes so far as to call Navarro a "charlatan" and says that "99.9 per cent of respectable economists would eschew" what he says: "He says imports deduct from output, and he calls that accounting identity the 'economic growth formula'. He thinks that for every dollar we import, our GDP is reduced by a dollar. I don't know how he got his PhD at Harvard."[233]
en.wikipedia.org
If a traitor tells him that 90% of Canadians want to join the US as the "51st state", the orange dotard moron believes him and that bullshit becomes American state policy.
All of Trump's economic policy comes directly from Navarro, who is a discredited economist, largely ridiculed as eccentric and incompetent in his own field. Navarro is the asshole who originated the obsession with balance of trade.
Here is Navarro's wiki bio and what it says.
On December 4, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced Navarro would be the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing in his second term.[167] He is one of the few officials from Trump's first term to return for his second term.[168] He assumed office on January 20, 2025.[169]
President Donald Trump signing Executive Orders, February 10, 2025, in the Oval Office. Navarro is standing behind Trump.
In January 2025, amidst Trump's threats to put tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Navarro called NAFTA a "catastrophe" in an interview and said because "China was so much worse," it was ignored "how bad NAFTA was." He also linked America's problems with illegal immigration to NAFTA, saying since the US started exporting corn to Mexico, many Mexican agricultural workers lost their jobs, sending some to the US.[169] In February 2025, Navarro and Stephen Miller were the leading officials in the economic discussions regarding the imposition of tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico.[170][171] Navarro was a key official behind Trump's decision to adopt a trade policy memo in the first day of the presidency, his decision to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S., as well as his decision to adopt so-called "reciprocal tariffs" for every country.[172]
The Financial Times reported in February 2025 that Navarro proposed expelling Canada from the Five Eyes.[173] A few days later, The Daily Telegraph reported that Navarro pushed US negotiators to start discussions with Canada about reworking and redrawing the US-Canada border, which reportedly prompted Canada to cease negotiating with the United States until Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer were confirmed to their positions by the Senate.[174] Navarro was a key official behind Trump's "reciprocal tariff" policy announced in April;[175] ING Group noted that plans for the policy appeared to align with Navarro's section of Project 2025, titled "The Case for Fair Trade", published in April 2023.[176] Bloomberg News reported that Navarro urged Trump to adopt a 25% tax on imports or "reciprocal" tariffs based on trade deficits; the latter idea was adopted as part of Trump's announcement.[177]
On April 5, 2025 Navarro was criticized by Trump advisor Elon Musk, who questioned his educational qualifications from Harvard on X and wrote "He ain’t built shit."[178] In response, Navarro said Musk is not a "car manufacturer". On April 8, Musk responded by calling Navarro "a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks", and said he should consult "the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara".[179]
Views
Main articles: International trade, Commercial policy, and Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign
Navarro speaking with attendees at the Believers Summit at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, July 26, 2024
Navarro has been a staunch critic of relations and trade with China and a strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits. He has attacked Germany, Japan, and China for their currency manipulation. An advocate of protectionist policies, he has called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, setting high tariffs, and repatriating global supply chains. He was a fierce opponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.[180]
Navarro's views on trade are considered outside the mainstream of economic thought.[181] According to Bloomberg News, Navarro had "roots as a mainstream economist"; he voiced support for free trade in his 1984 book The Policy Game. He changed his positions as he saw "the globalist erosion of the American economy" develop.[3] He would later become a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[182] According to Politico, Navarro's economic theories are "considered fringe" by his fellow economists.[183] A New Yorker reporter described Navarro's views on trade and China as so radical "that, even with his assistance, I was unable to find another economist who fully agrees with them."[184]
The Economist described Navarro as having "oddball views".[185] The George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen has described Navarro as "one of the most versatile and productive American economists of the last few decades", but Cowen noted that he disagreed with his views on trade, which he claimed to go "against a strong professional consensus."[183] University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers described Navarro's views as "far outside the mainstream," noting that "he endorses few of the key tenets of" the economics profession.[1] According to Lee Branstetter, economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University and trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Navarro "was never a part of the group of economists who ever studied the global free-trade system... He doesn't publish in journals. What he's writing and saying right now has nothing to do with what he got his Harvard Ph.D. in... He doesn't do research that would meet the scientific standards of that community."[186] Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, described a tax and trade paper written by Navarro and Wilbur Ross for Trump as "a complete misunderstanding of international trade, on their part."[39]
In 2023, Navarro co-authored the chapter on trade for the ninth edition of the Heritage Foundation's book Mandate for Leadership, which provides the policy agenda for Project 2025.[187] The chapter, called "the case for fair trade" is part of a dueling chapter on trade policy in which Navarro argues for tariffs and trade restrictions while other authors argue for free trade. The chapter details Navarro's plans to counter China through trade policy.[188] In the chapter, Navarro writes "America’s record on trade — specifically America’s chronic and ever-expanding trade deficit — says that America is the globe’s biggest trade loser and a victim of unfair, unbalanced, and nonreciprocal trade".[168] His view is that the tariff adjustments will spur the economy in the long run and yield enough revenue to pay for tax cuts.[189]
Political positions
Navarro's political affiliations and policy positions are "hotly disputed and across the spectrum." While he lived in Massachusetts studying for his PhD at Harvard, he was a registered Democrat. When he moved to California in 1986, he was initially registered as nonpartisan and became a registered Republican in 1989.[190] By 1991, he had again re-registered as an Independent, and carried that affiliation during the 1992 San Diego mayoral election. Around this time, he still considered himself a conservative Republican.[191] Navarro rejoined the Democratic Party in 1994 and remained a Democrat during each of his subsequent political campaigns.[190] In 1996, while he was running for Congress, Navarro was endorsed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and spoke at the 1996 Democratic Convention, saying, "I'm proud to be carrying the Clinton-Gore banner." He positioned himself as a "strong environmentalist and a progressive on social issues such as choice, gay rights, and religious freedom."[13][192][193]
Navarro supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008.[12] Navarro supported President Barack Obama's phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, the adoption of wind power, and carbon taxes in order to stop global warming.[194] During the 2016 presidential election, Navarro described himself as "a Reagan Democrat and a Trump Democrat abandoned by my party."[195] Despite this, Navarro was critical of Ronald Reagan's defense spending, called GDP growth during the administration a "Failure of Reaganomics"[196] and described the "10-5-3" tax proposal as "a very large corporate subsidy."[197] During the early stage of the Trump administration, Navarro was still known to be a Democrat, but by February 2018 he had again re-registered as a Republican.[70]
Border adjustment tax
Navarro supports a tax policy called "border adjustment", which, as commonly used in the VATs of most countries, taxes all imports at the domestic rate while rebating tax on exports, essentially transforming taxes from taxes on production to taxes on consumption.[186] In response to criticism that the border adjustment tax could hurt U.S. companies and put jobs at risk, Navarro called it "fake news".[186]
Criticism of China
Navarro joins U.S. president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping at their bilateral meeting, June 29, 2019.
Navarro is seen as very hawkish on China. According to The Guardian, Navarro sees China as a "despicable, parasitic, brutal, brass-knuckled, crass, callous, amoral, ruthless and totally totalitarian imperialist power that reigns over the world’s leading cancer factory, its most prolific propaganda mill and the biggest police state and prison on the face of the earth".[198] According to Politico, "Navarro is perhaps the most extreme advocate in Washington, and maybe in all of economics, for an aggressive stance toward China."[183] According to Vox, "Aided by cartoonish and frequently offensive stereotypes of the Chinese national character, Navarro tends to believe that there is something fundamentally underhanded and evil about China, regardless of any evidence to the contrary".[199]
Navarro focused his attention on China in the mid-2000s.[200] According to Chaos Under Heaven, a book by Josh Rogin, Navarro was part of a group of officials that wanted Trump to "speed the downfall" of the Chinese Communist Party and that "believed in economic nationalism, the return of manufacturing from abroad, and the protection of domestic industries, even at the expense of free trade".[201] His first publication on the subject is the 2006 book The Coming China Wars.[202] Navarro has said that he started to examine China when he noticed that his former students were losing jobs, concluding that China was at fault.[200]
In Politico's description of the book, "Navarro uses military language to refer to China's trade policies, referring to its 'conquest' of the world's export markets, which has 'vaporized literally millions of manufacturing jobs and driven down wages.' ... China's aspirations are so insatiable, he claims, that eventually there will be a clash over 'our most basic of all needs — bread, water, and air.'"[202] Navarro has described the entry of China to the World Trade Organization as one of the United States' biggest mistakes.[200] To respond to the threat posed to the United States, Navarro has advocated for 43% tariffs, the repudiation of trade pacts, major increases in military expenditures, and strengthened military ties with Taiwan.[202][200] The New York Times notes that "a wide range of economists have warned that curtailing trade with China would damage the American economy, forcing consumers to pay higher prices for goods and services."[24] Navarro has reportedly also encouraged Trump to enact a 25% tariff on Chinese steel imports, something that "trade experts worry... would upend global trade practices and cause countries to retaliate, potentially leading to a trade war".[50]
Navarro has said that a large part of China's competitive advantage over the United States stems from unfair trade practices.[21] Navarro has criticized China for pollution, poor labor standards, government subsidies, producing "contaminated, defective and cancerous" exports, currency manipulation, and theft of US intellectual property.[21][203] In his 2012 documentary, Navarro said that China caused the loss of 57,000 US factories and 25 million jobs. Navarro has maintained that China manipulates its currency, and on August 5, 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department officially designated China as a "currency manipulator."[204][200]
Of the more than a dozen China specialists contacted by Foreign Policy, most either did not know of Navarro or had only interacted with him briefly.[200] Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago professor of Chinese History, said that his "recollection is that [Navarro] generally avoided people who actually knew something about the country."[200] Columnist Gordon G. Chang was the only China watcher contacted by Foreign Policy who defended Navarro, but even he noted that he disagreed with Navarro's claims of currency manipulation, opposition to the TPP, and calls for high tariffs.[200] James McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said that Navarro's books and documentary on China "have close to zero credibility with people who know the country," and are filled with "hyperbole, inaccuracies" and a "cartoonish caricature of China that he puts out."[200] Some of Navarro's views on China fit within the mainstream, such as criticism of Chinese currency manipulation (pre-2015), concern that China's rapid ascension to the World Trade Organization harmed the Rust Belt, and criticism of China's weak environmental regulations and poor labor standards.[14][21]
On January 20, 2021, the Chinese government imposed sanctions against Navarro and 27 other Trump administration officials who "planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves, gravely interfered in China's internal affairs, undermined China's interests, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-U.S. relations". The sanctions ban them from entering China, including Hong Kong and Macau, and restrict companies and institutions associated with them from doing business in China.[205]
"Ron Vara"
In six of his books about China, Navarro quotes a "Ron Vara", whom he describes as a China hawk and former Harvard PhD doctoral student in economics who says Sinophobic things about China and the Chinese such as "you've got to be nuts to eat Chinese food" and "only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel".[206] An investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that no such person existed and that Ron Vara (an anagram of Navarro) appeared to represent views that Navarro himself held.[206][207] Navarro has admitted to making up the character, an author surrogate, and quoting him in his books.[207]
Economist Glenn Hubbard, who co-authored Seeds of Destruction with Navarro,[208] has said he was not aware that Vara was fictional, and that he disapproved of Navarro attributing information to a fictional source.[209] In December 2019, a memo purportedly written by Ron Vara began circulating in Washington, D.C. The memo highlighted the "Keep Tariff Argument" and the use of tariffs against China a few days before implementing an additional 15% tariff on $160 billion of Chinese-made goods. Navarro later confirmed that he had written the memo.[210] In response to the "Ron Vara" character, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China spokesperson Hua Chunying accused Navarro of "smearing China with lies".[211]
Navarro argues that the decline in US manufacturing jobs is chiefly due to "unfair trade practices and bad trade deals. And if you don't believe that, just go to the booming factories in Germany, in Japan, in Korea, in China, in Malaysia, in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in Italy — every place that we're running deficits with."[216] However, many economists attribute the decline in manufacturing jobs chiefly to automation and other innovations that allow manufacturing firms to produce more goods with fewer workers, rather than trade.[216][217]
Navarro has been a proponent of strengthening the manufacturing sector's role in the national economy: "We envision a more Germany-style economy, where 20 percent of our workforce is in manufacturing. ... And we're not talking about banging tin in the back room."[186] The New York Times notes that "experts on manufacturing ... doubt that the government can significantly increase factory employment, noting that mechanization is the major reason fewer people are working in factories."[24]
Opposition to trade deals
Navarro has criticized the United States–South Korea Free Trade Agreement.[218] Navarro called for the United States to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement, and tried to convince Trump to initiate a withdrawal.[50] Working together with former AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, a revised NAFTA agreement was put in place during the Trump administration.
Navarro opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Navarro said in an April 2015 op-ed, "To woo us, their spinmeisters boast the TPP will spur American exports to stimulate sorely needed economic growth. In truth, the American economy will suffer severely. This is because the TPP will hammer two main drivers of economic growth — domestic investment and 'net exports.'"[219] Navarro said in March 2017 that TPP "would have been a 'death knell' to America's auto and vehicle parts industry that we "urgently need to bring back to full life.'"[203] “Australia is just killing our aluminium market,” Mr Navarro told CNN. “President Trump says no, no, we’re not, we’re not doing that any more. Our aluminium industry is on its back.” “What they do is they just flood our markets,” Mr Navarro said of Australia's aluminium exports to the United States.[This quote needs a citation] Australia is not the biggest supplier to the United States, ranked only 17th for exports of steel to America and eighth in exports of aluminium over the past 10 years.
Trade as a national security risk
Navarro has framed trade as a national security risk.[202][220] Navarro has characterized foreign purchases of U.S. companies as a threat to national security, but according to NPR, this is "a fringe view that puts him at odds with the vast majority of economists."[221] Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin noted that the US government already reviews foreign purchases of companies with military or strategic value, and has on occasion rejected such deals.[221] Irwin said that Navarro had not substantiated his claim with any evidence.[221]
Navarro has also said that the United States has "already begun to lose control of [its] food supply chain", which according to NPR, "sounded pretty off-the-wall to a number of economists" who noted that the United States is a massive exporter of food.[221] Dermot Hayes, an agribusiness economist at Iowa State University, described Navarro's statement as "uninformed".[221] Navarro has called for repatriating global supply chains.[202][203] According to Politico's Jacob Heilbrunn, such a move "would be enormously costly and take years to execute".[202] Navarro criticized the outsourcing of critical materials — like the production of essential medical supplies — to China, in light of the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.[222]
Trade deficits
Main article: Balance of trade
Navarro is a proponent of the notion that trade deficits are bad in and of themselves, a view which is widely rejected by trade experts and economists.[223][224][225] In a white paper co-authored with Wilbur Ross, Navarro stated, "when a country runs a trade deficit by importing more than it exports, this subtracts from growth."[226] In a Wall Street Journal op-ed defending his views, Navarro stated, "If we are able to reduce our trade deficits through tough, smart negotiations, we should be able to increase our growth."[227] Harvard University economics professor Gregory Mankiw has said that Navarro's views on the trade deficit are based on the kind of mistakes that "even a freshman at the end of ec 10 knows."[224][228] Tufts University professor Daniel W. Drezner said about Navarro's op-ed, "as someone who's written on this topic I could not for the life of me understand his reasoning".[229] According to Tyler Cowen, "close to no one" in the economics profession agrees with Navarro's idea that a trade deficit is bad in and of itself.[230] Nobel laureate Angus Deaton described Navarro's attitude on trade deficits as "an old-fashioned mercantilist position."[225] The Economist has described Navarro's views on the trade deficit as "dodgy economics",[21] while the Financial Times has described them as "poor economics".[231] Economists Scott Sumner, Olivier Blanchard,[203] and Phil Levy[232] have also criticized Navarro's views on the trade deficit. Dan Ikenson, director of the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, goes so far as to call Navarro a "charlatan" and says that "99.9 per cent of respectable economists would eschew" what he says: "He says imports deduct from output, and he calls that accounting identity the 'economic growth formula'. He thinks that for every dollar we import, our GDP is reduced by a dollar. I don't know how he got his PhD at Harvard."[233]
Peter Navarro - Wikipedia
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