President Donald Trump’s punishing tariffs on countries around the world, including a 104 percent increase in duties on China, bear the fingerprint of Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist who has long warned against a rising Beijing.
Saying Washington’s trade deficit was a sign of unfair competition, Trump announced blanket 10 percent tariffs on countries and territories around the world last week, including islands inhabited only by penguins.
And nearly 60 economies face higher duties, including the over 100 percent tax on Chinese imports that took effect Wednesday after tit-for-tat tariffs between Beijing and Washington.
Navarro has advised Trump since before the 2016 presidential election, when candidate Trump vowed to crack down on unfair trade practices he argued have destroyed American jobs and left once-mighty US cities a shadow of their former selves.
The economist’s works include the documentary film, “Death by China: how America lost its manufacturing base,” connected to his 2011 book showing China as a serial trade cheater, subsidizing export-oriented industries and manipulating its currency.
The consequences, including a harsh deindustrialization of the United States, demand a tough response to China, or the “Dragon,” Navarro argued.
Navarro has since emerged as one of the president’s most loyal aides, a controversial figure who defended Trump’s campaign to deny the results of the 2020 presidential election that put Joe Biden in the White House.
Navarro, who will be 76 in July, has faced censure and ridicule from his political opponents and fellow Republicans alike, as a backlash builds against Trump’s tariffs within his own party.
The former university lecturer served a four-month sentence in prison last year for actions stemming from the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Navarro was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a deposition and refusing to supply documents to the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters.
And in 2020, Navarro clashed with top health expert Anthony Fauci over the Covid-19 pandemic, with the Trump administration official defending the use of an anti-malarial drug against the coronavirus.
Billionaire and major Trump backer Elon Musk called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks” on Tuesday after the trade advisor said the Tesla boss relies mostly on imported parts to make his electric cars.
Musk also dubbed him “Peter Retarrdo” and said Navarro “should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara” — referring to a fictional pundit Navarro quoted in a series of books and a policy memo, using an anagram of his own name.
Earlier, Senator Ted Cruz — a staunch Trump loyalist — warned that the United States could be on its way to an economic “bloodbath” after markets crashed on the back of Trump’s tariff announcement.
Navarro was named to Trump’s team soon after the 2016 election and quickly labeled a “visionary” by the American president. But his appointment spurred immediate unease at Beijing and many observers have seen his standing within the Trump universe as a proxy for the administration’s stance on trade.
Under Navarro’s guidance, Trump threatened to pull out of the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement during his first term and demanded renegotiation of the trade relationship.
Canada and Mexico eventually agreed to the replacement “USMCA” deal with new wording to boost US jobs.
That was after Trump signed an executive order formally ending US participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership in one of his first official acts as president in January 2017.
Long affiliated with the Democratic Party, which historically has been more protectionist of the two major US parties, Navarro received a doctorate in economics from Harvard.
Born to a saxophonist father and secretary mother, he was raised by his mother after the two divorced in Bethesda, Maryland, an upscale suburb of the nation’s capital.
