Peter Navarro | Trump’s tariff czar

Peter Navarro
| Photo Credit: Illustration: Sreejith R. Kumar

The mayhem unleashed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policy caused many to wonder: does he have a qualified economist to advise him? Turns out he does. His name is Peter Navarro and he holds a PhD in economics from Harvard.

Mr. Navarro, senior counsel for trade and manufacturing to the U.S. President, is widely acknowledged as the brain behind the administration’s weaponisation of tariffs. His White House colleague Elon Musk, however, might dispute the ‘brain’ part. Mr. Musk has publicly called Mr. Navarro a “moron”, “Peter Retarrdo” and described him as “dumber than a sack of bricks”. Mr. Navarro hit back, asserting that Mr. Musk was not a ‘car manufacturer’ but only a ‘car assembler’, as his company, Tesla, sourced parts from around the world.

The public spat with Mr. Musk is only the latest chapter in the bizarre career of Mr. Navarro, an economist not taken seriously by mainstream economists. And yet, by virtue of having the ear of the U.S. President, he is arguably the most powerful economist in the world today. Not only are his ideas dictating U.S. trade policy, but his antipathy toward China has set the world’s two largest economies on a collision course that he appears to have both anticipated and solicited.

A professor of economics and public policy who taught for three decades at the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Navarro was not always a protectionist. In his own telling, he became one only after observing China’s deleterious impact on the American economy. He has set out his analysis in two books, The Coming China Wars (2006) and Death by China (2011), where he argues that China, in its pursuit of global economic domination, is following unfair practices that are bound to generate conflict — over energy, natural resources, environment, intellectual property, and employment.

Mr. Navarro flags four issues in particular: China’s “theft” of American intellectual property, its disregard of environmental norms, its currency manipulation, and the subsidies it gives its exporters. All of this gives China an unfair advantage in the form of an ever-mounting trade surplus that, Mr. Navarro argues, China uses to buy up American assets. Not only is China responsible for hollowing out American manufacturing, it also poses a national security risk given that this “cheating” is by a geopolitical rival.

Not many would dispute his thesis that the migration of manufacturing jobs to China has affected American blue collar workers. But his solution — taking the hammer to free trade — has few backers in mainstream economics. Mr. Navarro believes that by whipping China with higher and higher tariffs, the U.S. could force it to mend its ways.

As Mr. Navarro championed these views through books and television, his protectionist rhetoric caught Mr. Trump’s eye, resonating as it did with the latter’s agenda of ‘MAGA’ economic nationalism.

In his first Presidency, Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Navarro as head of the National Trade Council. Although his designation kept changing, Mr. Navarro, in his stint in the White House, spearheaded a trade war with China, pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which contained measures to lower tariffs, and tried to get America out of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as well.

Mr. Navarro is that rare official from the first Trump Presidency who not only lasted the full term but made it to the second in a powerful role. Some would say he earned it: Mr. Navarro refused to testify in the investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, opting to serve four months in jail for contempt of Congress. Clearly, not even Mr. Musk, who donated millions to Mr. Trump’s campaign, can outscore him in the loyalty metrics.

With most nations ready to talk to the U.S., Mr. Navarro’s tariff policy appears to have isolated the one country that had been his target all along. The “China Wars” he had warned about is almost here. It remains to be seen if the U.S. economy, and his associates in the White House, share his appetite for this fight.