The Trade Adviser Who Hates Trade

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/business/economy/peter-navarro-trump-tariffs.html

https://archive.ph/HCa5X

The Trade Adviser Who Hates Trade
Once sidelined, President Trump’s counselor Peter Navarro has returned to Washington and quickly upended the global trading system.
By Ana Swanson
April 20, 2025

On a clear day last July in Miami, Peter Navarro emerged from four months in federal prison, where he’d been imprisoned for contempt of Congress. Mr. Navarro had refused to testify in an investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, an action he described as a defense of the Constitution.

Just hours after his release from prison, Mr. Navarro flew to Milwaukee to speak at the Republican National Convention in support of Donald J. Trump’s re-election.

As the 100-day mark of the president’s term approaches, Mr. Navarro has already helped Mr. Trump roll out half a dozen major trade moves. These steps have brought tariffs to levels not seen in a century, in an attempt to curb American dependence on imports and force factories back to the United States. Two people with knowledge of the administration’s deliberations said Mr. Navarro was the likely origin of a controversial formula the White House used for calculating tariff rates based on U.S. trade deficits.

“It’s like appointing someone who believes the world is flat to be in charge of NASA,” said Bryan Riley, the director of the Free Trade Initiative at the National Taxpayers’ Union, a conservative lobbying group.

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[Iggo]

1. It's a feature, not a bug.

[dalton99a]

2. +1. Like the education secretary who hates education and the health secretary who wants to kill Americans

[kimbutgar]

3. I'm shocked he used to be a Democrat in the 90's

I saw a picture of him from then and he hasn’t aged well and is so evil looking.

[Comrade Citizen]

4. It's surreal ....