The Fake Friend Who Helped Break U.S. Trade
- Ronan Nauert
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
Just hours after being released from jail, a suited, slick-backed-hair, reinvigorated Peter Navarro showed up at the RNC to give a 10-minute speech that was, for the most part, relatively forgettable. Navarro talked about what he thought was a politicized Department of Justice (calling it the “Department of Injustice”), and nondescriptly announced his engagement, and brought his fiancée on stage, as she wore a revealing USA t-shirt and a MAGA hat.
In that moment, few would have been able to guess the extent to which Navarro, an economist, would end up influencing US economic and trade policy. This same protectionist trade policy has drawn widespread ire from other economists, who see it as damaging the US economy in the long term. Many elite, Ivy League economists find themselves especially distraught with Trump’s policy. Yet, Mr. Navarro, who got his PhD in economics from Harvard University and is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine, is certainly no economics novice.
In the economics world, Navarro is well-known for his antagonism towards China (Navarro's signature book is called Death by China) and is widely seen as far outside of the economic mainstream. However, like many in Trump's world (including Trump himself), Navarro's beliefs have drastically changed throughout his career.
Living in California, Navarro (who was a registered Democrat before 1986, and once again from 1994-2018) ran for office various times, as a Democrat, and once spoke at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). According to Politico, he was known as a progressive Democrat and described as a “radical liberal” by a California GOP political strategist. Navarro even ran for Congress with the support (at the time) of First Lady Hillary Clinton, who even campaigned for him (Navarro later went on to further praise her in the San Diego Confidential), and he supported Bill Clinton (whose economic policies went deeply contrary to those espoused by Navarro today). But one thing has stayed consistent about Navarro: he was widely seen as unlikable.
In the same 2020 Politico article, Navarro was described by his former (Democratic) campaign manager as “the biggest asshole [he had] ever known.” Former California GOP chair Ron Nehring sharply criticized Navarro via Twitter (now X), saying he would trust NIAID Director Anthony Fauci (Navarro and Fauci were feuding at the time) over Navarro any day. It has also been reported that Mr. Navarro lost his temper with (at the time) Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, screaming and berating Mr. Mnuchin over his objections to Mnuchin’s approach to trade talks with China (Mr. Navarro was in a lower position within the administration at the time). In 2020, it was once again reported that Mr. Navarro had started a fight with Mr. Mnuchin, this time over TikTok, in what was called a “knockdown, drag-out’ brawl.”
Just months into President Trump's second term, Navarro has once again started a fight within the White House, this time with the billionaire leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (also known as DOGE), Elon Musk. It all started when Navarro insulted Musk, saying that he was a "car assembler" who builds cars with cheap imported goods. Musk then hit back at Navarro over X (formerly Twitter), calling Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks.” Since then, Navarro has claimed that “everything's fine with Elon,” and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed the situation, indifferently replying that “boys will be boys.”
During the first Trump presidency, Navarro served in a variety of roles within the White House, but was largely ignored and according to former Trump staffers (whom staffers have since abandoned Trump and become opponents of the President), Navarro was seen as a “liability” who was “‘strategically’ left off of calendar invites.” Regardless of his advisors' attempts to separate him from Trump, Trump has long been a fan of Navarro and deeply trusts him.
The President has been reported to call Mr. Navarro “ my Pete,” and, once, after his advisors had cut Navarro out of trade talks with China, repeatedly asked “where’s my Peter?”. But Trump's admiration for Navarro started long before his presidency. In fact, in 2012, Trump wrote a recommendation for the film adaptation of Navarro's signature book, Death by China, saying, “DEATH BY CHINA is right on. This important documentary depicts our problem with China with facts, figures, and insight. I urge you to see it.”
While Trump's advisors were then able to separate the President from Mr. Navarro, the more traditional Republicans who worked in the first Trump administration have now been replaced by loyalists who mindlessly obey his demands. The same man who was ostracized during Trump's first term as crazy now regularly visits the President and has great sway on trade policy.
This new power given to Navarro has led to an economic policy that is drastically different from that of the President's first term, or of any President in recent history. The President has put tariffs on not just China (although a trade deal has since been made), but also the EU and countries around the world. Behind the scenes, Navarro, who has attacked American allies like the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada, has helped orchestrate much of the President's trade and tariff policy and has been blamed for the flawed calculations used for what the President called “retaliatory tariffs.”
But, despite intense market volatility and economic anxiety that seems to have led to the President's plummeting approval rating, Navarro remains stubbornly defensive of his strategy, saying that he sees current economic news as the “best negative print” in his life.
The disappointment in all of this is that Navarro gets to keep calling himself an economist and can keep using his Harvard PhD as proof that he is not stupid. And, to be fair, Mr. Navarro is certainly not unintelligent. While I find his economic opinions to be ill-advised and unintelligible, I do not fundamentally believe that Mr. Navarro is unsmart. But, what I do believe is that Mr. Navarro is a leader who desperately seeks attention, thinks outlandishly, and basks in incompetence.
These personality traits seem to be common in the MAGA world, where the fewer actual qualifications you have, the better, and the more insane your claims, the more qualified you are. Mr. Navarros' outlandishness and pure incompetence can be seen long before he joined politics. Not only was Mr. Navarro universally hated for being hard to work with, but he infamously cited Harvard PhD student Ron Vara dozens of times. The problem? Vara was a make-up character, and an anagram of Navarro's name, who was described as an alter-ego of Navarro himself.
That level of incompetence may sound a little silly- after all, what does an imaginary friend do to us? But, we are no longer just talking about economic theories; we are talking about real trade policy that affects everyday Americans who are already struggling to get by. It is not just the pure mindlessness of their policy that shocks me, but more so, it is the pure level of incompetence and carelessness demonstrated by Mr. Navarro and others in the Trump Administration, who see everything as nothing more than a political gambit.
Photo Credit:
[Header]: AP Photo
[Embedded 1]: Reuters
[Embedded 2]: San Diego Reader
Sources:
[11]-https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-8-1993-remarks-signing-nafta
[19]-https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/sep/21/ticker-navarro-pushed-aside-white-house-politico/
[20]-https://www.newsweek.com/ex-trump-aide-claims-peter-navarro-was-seen-liability-white-house-1829352?
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