Latest news with #PeterNavarro
Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Times
How a man described as ‘dumber than a sack of bricks' came to dominate global trade policy
Elon Musk called him 'a moron' and 'dumber than a sack of bricks' but he's probably the most consequential economist in the world right now. 75-year-old Peter Navarro is the intellectual driving force behind global tariffs and Donald Trump's attempt to rewire the global trading system. He wangled his way into Maga hearts with his 2011 book 'Death by China' (later a documentary) which paints China as the great Satan of world trade. In it, Navarro argues that Beijing engages in unfair trade practices, from intellectual property theft and currency manipulation to product dumping and abusive labour standards. READ MORE [ Donald Trump accuses China of violating US tariff truce Opens in new window ] And, more importantly, that the US worker is the chief fall guy. 'If the Chinese vampire can't suck the American blood, it's going to suck the UK blood and the EU blood,' he told the Daily Telegraph last month while accusing the UK of being a 'compliant servant of communist China'. The Massachusetts-born economist played a role in the first Trump administration but his push for a more aggressive stance on China was crowded out by free trade conservatives (the US did impose tariffs on Beijing but they were limited in scope). But Navarro is nothing but steadfast and he drinks the Maga Kool-Aid. He took part in the Rudy Giuliani-led campaign to have the 2020 US election result overturned and spent four months in prison last year for refusing to co-operate with the congressional inquiry into the January 6th attack on the US Capito l. His reward was to be appointed Trump's senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing and to have his tariff agenda elevated to the heart of US trade policy, the source of so much global turmoil at present. According to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Navarro was the brains behind Trump's reciprocal tariff formula presented by the president on a cardboard chart in the White House Rose Garden. The formula, which has no precedent in economic theory, took the US goods trade deficit with a specific country, divided it by that country's exports to the US, turned it into a percentage and then cut it in half to produce the tariff rate. It generated weird outcomes. Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, qualified for a punitive 47 per cent tariff on a modest $733 million of exports of vanilla, metals and clothing to the US. Navarro is spearheading this protectionist drive or at least providing an economic rationale for Trump's isolationist tendencies. His standing in academic circles took a hammering a few years back when it emerged that he had fabricated one of the people frequently quoted in his books. 'Ron Vara' is cited in several of Navarro's books mainly to make the case against China but Ron Vara was an anagram of Navarro, and was in fact Navarro citing himself. He defended the fabrication as a 'whimsical device' but it seems even his co-authors weren't in on the joke and publishing companies are now adding advisory notes to his books. Like many in the current Washington administration, Navarro was a fringe figure (he used to write get rich quick investment books) before being anointed by Trump. If his views on tariffs are in the minority, his representation of China as the chief villain of the global trading system has become more mainstream and resonates strongly with Trump's voter base. The US has lost close to 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2001, the year China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The decline has been unprecedented by US standards and has created, or at least compounded, what's often referred to as a Rust Belt from the Midwest to the Great Lakes, an area that spans from western New York to Michigan and north Illinois and encompasses states like West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana. It was once the backbone of US industry, but it has now become synonymous with economic decline, population loss and urban decay. You could argue that the US backlash against globalisation and politics currently playing out in Washington is largely a product of Rust Belt economics. Navarro penned a chapter in Project 2025 (reputedly the ultraconservative blueprint for Trump's second term) called 'the case for fair trade' in which he makes the argument for action against what he describes as China's 'institutionalised aggression'. And why the US's big trade deficits (in goods) with other countries (Ireland is highlighted as having the seventh biggest) has been so damaging. 'These trade deficit statistics implicitly measure the large amounts of America's manufacturing and defense industrial base and supply chains that have been offshored to foreign lands,' he says. 'Such offshoring not only suppresses the real wages of American blue-collar workers and denies millions of Americans the opportunity to climb up the rungs of the ladder to the middle class, but also raises the spectre of a manufacturing and defense industrial base that, unlike our experience in World Wars I and II, will not be able to provide the weapons and material that would be needed should America enter another major world war or seek to assist a major ally like Europe, Japan, or Taiwan,' he says. The above passage encapsulates why many in the US see globalisation as a betrayal of the American dream and a fundamental attack on US hegemony.
ABC News
21 hours ago
- Business
- ABC News
Elon Musk may come to wonder if DOGE was worth the fights
If it wasn't for his shock-and-awe destruction of government agencies, Elon Musk's DOGE era might have been defined by his many MAGA feuds. The first big schism, before Trump was even inaugurated, set the standard for some of the personal attacks to come. "We're going to rip your face off," Trump ally Steve Bannon said in his podcast late last year, an apparent warning to Musk during a dispute over specialist worker visas. Bannon, who was Trump's chief strategist in his first term, had already declared he'd "made it my personal thing to take this guy down". "Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant," he later said. Leaks from inside the White House suggest Musk soon made some more powerful enemies. "F*** you! f*** you! f*** you!" Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly screamed at Musk in the West Wing hallway in April. Tensions exploded after Musk hand-picked a new tax-agency boss without Bessent's knowledge, according to reports citing witnesses. Musk had already clashed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a cabinet meeting a month earlier, where he criticised both for firing too few workers. No fan of tariffs, Musk also fought with Trump's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, on his own X platform. After Navarro mocked Tesla as a car "assembler" rather than "manufacturer", Musk called him "a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks". Then, perhaps deciding he hadn't been offensive enough, he followed up by calling him "Peter Retarrdo". "Boys will be boys," Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said later. "We will let their public sparring continue," she said, adding it "speaks to the president's willingness to hear from all sides". The public sparring also spoke to perceptions in Trump's circles that Musk was a chaos agent with too much access and power. Some of the president's allies were no doubt relieved to see his Wednesday tweet confirming his time in government was coming to an end. "This is a way to make a lot of enemies and not that many friends," Musk said of his work about a month before his announcement. Musk has been in frequent fights on every front. He's facing multiple legal battles over DOGE's actions. States like New York are looking at ways to punish his businesses. And he's in regular stoushes online and elsewhere with Democrats and, on occasion, Republicans. A lot of it could be written off as the rough-and-tumble of American politics, which is more intense and extreme than ever. But what's especially hurt Musk and his businesses — particularly his electric-vehicle venture — is the public backlash. Tesla was battered by a stock sell-off campaign and a sharp drop in sales, as well as protests and vandalism at dealerships, before reporting a 71 per cent profit plummet in the first quarter of this year. (It should be noted some analysts expect Musk's business interests will come out ahead overall, given the benefits his other companies — like SpaceX — could enjoy after his influential White House stint.) Musk has expressed frustration he couldn't get more done at DOGE. "I think we've been effective — not as effective as I'd like," he told his final cabinet meeting. But certain MAGA priorities, which have recently come into clearer view, could now prove even more frustrating for him to watch play out from afar. Musk had frequently talked about the DOGE mission as a nation-saving one. He argues the US's rising debt puts it at risk of bankruptcy. That's why he's so unhappy with Trump's spending bill — official name: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. "I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful," Musk told CBS. "But I don't know if it can be both." The bill raises the debt ceiling — that is, the legal limit placed on federal government borrowing — by $US4 trillion ($6.2 trillion). It includes new tax cuts, and extends income tax cuts from Trump's first term, which Democrats and others criticised for disproportionately benefiting the rich. At the same time, it puts new requirements on access to food stamps and health insurance for low-income Americans, projected to impact millions of people. It's now before the Senate after passing the House of Representatives by one vote. Musk told CBS: "I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit — not decrease it — and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing." In what may have been his final White House press conference on Friday, local time, Musk wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "The Dogefather". He was also sporting a black eye, which he said was the result of inviting his five-year-old son to punch him in the face. The shiner, rather than the shirt, might be the symbol that best represents his government stint. In many ways, it's been bruising. And Musk may come to wonder if it was worth all the fights.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Flattery and sleight of hand: The art of managing President Trump
Marco Rubio, the US foreign secretary, had a dilemma. Peace talks were fast approaching in London last month but Ukraine had signalled it was not ready to accept Washington's proposal to end the war. So he pulled out of the talks, leaving negotiations to more junior officials. Better that than having to return to Washington and report his failure to Donald Trump, his quixotic boss. 'Fundamentally, he didn't come to London, because what they understood the Ukrainians were bringing to London was something that he would not be able to sell back in the White House, so there was no point in him coming,' a source with knowledge of the negotiations said. 'He made it pretty clear when explaining the reasoning behind his decision for not attending with the foreign secretary.' It is just one of the ways that Cabinet officials, advisers and aides are managing the president, killing off dubious ideas or keeping themselves out of the firing line. The result is a surprisingly stable White House. Where Trump 1.0 was marked by leaks, infighting and dismissals, this time around, disagreements have mostly played out quietly behind the scenes. No one has played the game better than Mr Rubio, who has seen his stock rise to the point where he is talked of as a potential 2028 runner. Peter Navarro has watched it all from his palatial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House. He is one of the few survivors of Mr Trump's first term and confided there was little secret to getting along with the president. 'Basically, you help president Trump fulfil his vision,' he previously told The Telegraph. 'Never take the credit. Be willing to take the blame.' However, insiders have worked out a string of tricks to gently bring Mr Trump around to their way of thinking. And Mr Navarro himself has ended up on the wrong side of such strategies. He was one of the key architects behind 'liberation day' when Mr Trump unveiled swingeing tariffs on goods imported around the world. The immediate impact was to plunge markets into free-fall, spooking key Trump administration figures who sensed a political bloodbath. So when Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, hatched a plan to urge Mr Trump to think again, they knew they needed to keep Mr Navarro as far away as possible. They made sure they met the president when the hawkish trade adviser had his own meeting elsewhere in the White House and was away from Mr Trump's ear. It is a feature, not a flaw, of Mr Trump's style of management, say those that know him well, as he enjoys the spectacle of staffers fighting it out to influence policy. It is a divide-and-conquer approach to team building, said Barbara Res, who described her 18 years at the Trump Organisation in a memoir Tower of Lies. 'He will pit two people against each other and divide them, instead of allowing them to join forces in a disagreement with him or complain about him,' she said. 'And he likes to see them fight and see who comes out on top.' She even described how he pitted his own ex-wife, Ivana, against a Trump Organisation employee on rival redevelopments in Atlantic City during the 1990s to see who would do best. Trump 2.0 is different from Trump 1.0. Then Mr Trump's administration was built from scratch, in the days after his shock election win, drawing on members of the Republican Party establishment, Wall Street and the armed forces. They did not make easy bedfellows and the first tranche of memoirs from that time revealed all sorts of tricks used by officials to build guardrails around an unpredictable and inexperienced president. A book by political insider Bob Woodward described how Gary Cohn, Mr Trump's chief economic adviser, was so disturbed by plans to end a free trade agreement with South Korea that he simply removed a draft letter from the president's desk before he could sign it. 'Working inside the White House with him was like living inside a pinball machine,' is how one former staffer put it. John Bolton, Mr Trump's third national security adviser in his first administration, said he found much of his job was simply trying to keep the policy process on track. 'People found out that if they just happened to be the last person to talk to him, as likely as not, they would get the outcome they wanted,' he told The Telegraph. 'Well, of course, the whole National Security Council process is intended to prevent that from happening.' He lasted 18 months in office and is today one of the figures most hated by Mr Trump and his allies. This time around, the president has built an administration of loyalists who stayed close to him through four years in the political wilderness. Much of the policy comes directly from trusted advisers such as Stephen Miller. And last Friday, officials took an axe to the NSC, firing 100 officials, and concentrating decision-making in the hands of a few senior directors. Even so, some of the same rules that applied the first time around still stand. Keep memos brief. Make them graphic. Be the first to arrive with good news. Get yourself on TV as much as possible. And things work best if it sounds like the idea has come from Mr Trump himself. 'Try something like, do you remember that day we were talking about blah, blah, blah, and you said we should stop doing that thing,' said a former aide to Mr Trump. 'first he'll say, 'No, I never said that.' 'Then you come back with well, we were all very surprised and in awe of you taking that position. And eventually he'll say, 'Yeah I guess I did do that.' Other Trump allies take a dim view of the tactics. 'I don't fall in the list of people that try to manipulate him, so I don't need a strategy,' said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hardline congresswoman and staunch Trump ally. 'I'm real with him. And he's pretty smart about who he's dealing with.'
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Businesses Worried About Tariffs Could Follow Chinese Firms
Singapore is seen as a key location by Chinese businesses. (Photo by) This week's ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade that Donald Trump had no authority to use the emergency economic powers legislation cited when he imposed global trade tariffs last month may have given succour to the President's many critics. However, with the administration quickly launching an appeal and leading trade adviser Peter Navarro insisting 'nothing has changed,' the move will do little to ease the confusion and uncertainty confronting business leaders around the world. Clearly, executives need to start thinking of different approaches if they are to survive, let alone thrive, in an environment in which established business models are under threat. One route could be, as business school professor Shameen Prashantham suggests, to follow the example of certain Chinese companies, which have, of course, more experience than most in dealing with Trump's policies. Put simply, these businesses are increasing their international activities by shifting their focus from regions and countries to particular places where they see opportunity. Prashantham, Professor of International Business and Strategy at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, says that firms have been forced to look outward because confidence in the domestic Chinese economy did not return after the pandemic. China's move into Africa and other developing parts of the globe under the Belt and Road Initiative is well known. Indeed, only this week it was reported to have pledged to open its markets to more products from the Pacific Islands and increase assistance to a region from which the U.S. has been retreating. But Prashantham says it is less appreciated that some businesses have seen the potential in some very specific places, where the presence of resources, talent or skills can be critically important to the ability to scale up operations. In taking this approach, they are following a strategy set out by the McKinsey Global Institute. Identifying 40,000 'micro-regions' around the world (in place of the 178 countries that it had previously looked at) the research arm of the management consultancy pointed out how this 'granular data' could better inform decisions about where to locate factories and plants than more general country information. As the study found, 'within-country differences are often far more pronounced than between-country variations.' Among the areas described are the Eastern Economic Corridor in Thailand and Chihuahua in Mexico. But many more are becoming the lenses through which Chinese leaders in particular see opportunity, says Prashantham, who has described how this works in a business review article co-authored with Lola Woetzel, a senior partner emerita of McKinsey in Shanghai. A key approach is to establish strategic hubs for emerging regions. Examples include Singapore for South-east Asia or Dubai for the Middle East and North Africa, chosen for infrastructure, talent and agility. Another case is Mauritius, which is seen as the intersection of Asia and Africa and during the pandemic was one of many countries to actively encourage the arrival of 'digital nomads' through golden visas and the like. In addition, Casablanca in Morocco is consciously positioning itself as a link between the Middle east, Africa and Europe. Another is to find new routes into old markets. Chinese companies have been adept at relocating operations to micro-regions where trade and innovation advantages bring added value. This explains the large Chinese populations (often from particular regions in their home country) in certain towns in Spain and Italy. With modern technology, it is also possible to use virtual teams and platforms to create digital talent hubs and so sidestep regulatory hurdles and scale without borders. All of which suggests that international trade is more resilient than some policy makers and politicians might believe. With few modern businesses content to operate in their domestic markets alone, expect to see more efforts to find ways around tariffs or to seize opportunities where the rewards outweigh any disadvantages imposed by them.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
‘They'll blame Donald Trump': Karl Rove warns tariffs will turn 2026 voters to Democrats, Navarro goes ballistic
Longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove warned this week that the 'muddled mess' around Donald Trump's 'chaotic trade talk' could 'badly damage' the Republican Party in the midterms next year, adding that voters would 'blame' the president for higher prices and scarce goods. The stern words from Rove, a longtime Fox News contributor, prompted the president's trade adviser to rage against the former George W. Bush deputy chief of staff and campaign architect on Rove's own network. 'Shame on you, Karl Rove,' Peter Navarro growled during a Thursday afternoon appearance on Fox Business. In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Rove explained that Republicans are stuck dealing with 'two messaging challenges' at the moment – Medicaid funding in the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' and the president's tariffs. 'The story isn't good for the GOP,' Rove noted, pointing out that Trump is severely underwater in polls on his handling of the economy, largely due to concerns that his trade policy will spark inflation and a recession. 'That starts to explain why stock markets drop when Mr. Trump rattles his trade saber and rebound when he walks back his tariff threats,' he added, seemingly referencing the 'TACO' strategy Wall Street investors have employed when it comes to the president's latest trade announcements. 'The administration's messaging is a muddled mess,' he added. 'Republicans should hope the president really believes in reciprocity—the policy that if countries lower their tariffs, we'll lower ours. He should have confidence that America can compete if the playing field is level.' 'Unless reciprocity prevails, the president's chaotic trade talk will badly damage Republicans in the midterms,' Rove concluded. 'And if the House or Senate flips, the president will find it much harder to advance his priorities in his final two years. Voters won't blame foreign countries for higher prices or fewer goods. They'll blame Donald Trump and his Republican Party.' Meanwhile, shortly after Rove's column dropped, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump had 'exceeded his authority' with the majority of the import taxes he'd imposed over the past few months, including last month's so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs. A federal appeals court followed up by temporarily reinstating the tariffs until the legal challenges fully play out. Appearing on Fox Business Network's The Claman Countdown, Navarro fumed about the 'rogue judges' who rejected the administration's arguments that Trump currently has broad authority to import sweeping tariffs under emergency powers. Fox anchor Liz Claman, meanwhile, reminded Navarro that one of the trade court judges was appointed by Trump himself. Navarro had a similar meltdown Thursday when a reporter for The Independent, Andrew Feinberg, asked about the frequency with which the administration attacks judges as 'activists' when the president or his officials disagree with their rulings. 'Who is this guy?' the hair-trigger Navarro railed, evading the question in the process. Claman also brought up Rove's warning that the ongoing uncertainty over the president's trade policies and the potential economic damage they could unleash may end up hurting the GOP in upcoming elections. Navarro, echoing the president's repeated criticism of his one-time political adviser, personally tore into Rove in response. 'Let's start with Karl Rove. Karl Rove is the guy who lost the Georgia two Senate seats for us. And his day has passed about…a decade ago,' Navarro groused, referencing Republicans losing both of the 2021 Senate runoff races. 'He hates the tariffs, he hates Donald Trump.' He continued: 'Anything he says is totally discounted, and he said the same stuff during the first term. He said that consumers were gonna eat the tariffs. They did not. Shame on you, Karl Rove! When are you gonna learn, sir?' Since Trump first left office after his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, Rove has repeatedly criticized the president over his 'reckless petulance' and criminal behavior, naturally leading the president to fire back with personal attacks and demands that Fox News fire the Republican consultant. Following Trump's return to the White House earlier this year, Rove has sounded the alarm on Trump's sinking poll numbers while pointing out that Americans are 'already exhausted' with the president's 'flood the zone' tactics. 'There's way too much retribution. Most of the president's revenge attempts will end badly for him. Republicans could rue the day they set a new justification for retaliation from Democrats,' Rove argued last month. 'I don't need to have Karl Rove of Fox News to tell me what to do. The guy's a total Loser who's been wrong about almost everything!' Trump fired back on Truth Social a few weeks ago.
