Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Wenser ( @wenser 2010 )
Overnight, people suddenly woke up: after the Trump administration launched a tariff trade war, the U.S. stock market has lost more than $6 trillion in market value, and the total market value of cryptocurrencies has fallen by nearly 10% in a day. On the other hand, Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser to the Trump administration, said in an interview with the media that the U.S. stock market will eventually usher in a full recovery and the most important rule, especially for retail investors, is that unless you sell your stocks, you will not lose money. The wise strategy now is not to panic and hold on. Who is this person? Why dare to make such a bold statement now that the market has fallen sharply?
With such questions in mind, Odaily Planet Daily will, in this article, take readers to get closer to Peter Navarro, an American economist known as the chief architect of the Trump administrations tariff and trade war and a member of Trumps first government team, to get a glimpse of the hidden information behind his remarks.
The Internet celebrity economists academic disappointment and political success
Public information shows that Peter Navarro has two obvious labels:
First, he is an academic. He was previously a professor of economics and public policy at the Paul Meregue School of Business at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and is now emeritus.
The second is his political identity. He was a member of Trump’s first administration (2016-2020). He initially served as director of the White House National Trade Council and later as director of the government’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.
In addition, Peter Navarro has run for public office five times in San Diego, California, but was unsuccessful each time ( Odaily Planet Daily Note: It is extremely abstract that there are rumors that the reason for his failure in one of his campaigns was traffic congestion and he missed the election ).
While studying for a doctorate in economics at Harvard University, he wrote a book titled Policy Game: How Special Interest Groups and Ideological Elements Steal America, claiming that special interest groups led the United States to a historical moment where growth and prosperity cannot occur. In the book, he also called for increased workers compensation to help those who lost their jobs due to trade and foreign competition. His doctoral thesis On Why Business Companies Donate to Charity is one of his most frequently cited papers. Because he has been advocating anti-globalization and trade war policies, other economists generally regard his academic views as marginal views, which also laid the groundwork for his 20 years of sitting on the teaching bench.
In addition, as a strong supporter of reducing the US trade deficit, Peter Navarro is well-known for his tough stance on China. As early as 2006, he wrote the book The Coming China War, which examined China as an emerging world power and proposed that China is struggling to assert itself in the global market while facing challenges at home and abroad. In the book, he also discussed Chinas role in international trade and various conflicts with countries around the world on issues such as energy, natural resources, environment, and intellectual property rights.
In 2011, he co-authored the book Deadly China with Greg Autry, an expert on US space policy, arguing that China violated fair trade and dumped goods into the US market through illegal export subsidies and currency manipulation, making it impossible for US companies to compete. As a result, he called for expanding the scale of US manufacturing, imposing high tariffs, and bringing the global supply chain back to the country.
Internet meme: Trumps version of technical adjustment
It was a series of exaggerated remarks by internet celebrities and published books that attracted the attention of Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner. At that time, the latter was looking for an economist consultant for Trumps first presidential campaign, and by chance, the book Deadly China on Amazon provided him with an excellent selection opportunity.
It is worth mentioning that Peter Navarros political affiliation and policy stance can be described as extremely controversial, even spanning the entire political spectrum - in the decades from 1981 to 2016, he had repeatedly jumped between the Republican Party, independents and Democrats , and even in the early days of Trumps first administration, he was still considered a Democrat, but in February 2018, he re-registered as a Republican.
It was under his operation that Trumps first administration made a series of sassy operations, including the Sino-US trade war, encouraging Trump to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and pushing the United States to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
Second spring in political life: Peter Navarro returns to Trump administration
In January 2025, Peter Navarro was appointed as the Senior Advisor on Trade and Manufacturing for President Trump’s second term, which once again set the tone for a new round of “tariff trade wars.”
This is, of course, inseparable from his previous loyalty -
In 2020, Navarro attempted to overturn the results of the then-presidential election through an “election fraud conspiracy theory”;
In February 2022, he was subpoenaed by Congress twice and was later transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice for refusing to cooperate; in 2022, a grand jury indicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress;
In 2023, he was ultimately convicted on both counts, and in 2024, Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison, becoming the first former White House official to be jailed for contempt of Congress.
It was precisely because of this series of die-hard operations that after Trump took office as president in January this year, he was still absorbed into the Project 2025 project (Odaily Planet Daily Note: the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a political initiative aimed at reshaping the U.S. federal government and favoring right-wing policies), and was once again entrusted with the important task of an advisor. He is also one of the few returnees among the Trump administration members.
Frequent operations: Academic fraud creates shadow clones
It is undoubtedly confusing that such a seemingly professional and authoritative economics professor mindlessly advocates tariffs and trade wars. However, after actual investigation, we found that Navarro is a habitual offender of academic fraud.
In his six published books on China, Navarro cites a character named “Ron Vara,” whom he describes as a China hawk and former Harvard University doctoral student in economics, and whose comments about China and the Chinese are full of Sinophobic sentiments, such as “You have to be crazy to eat Chinese food” and “Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a crib into a deadly weapon, and a cell phone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel.”
A subsequent investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that such a person did not exist, and that Ron Vara (a homonym of Navarro) appeared to represent Navarros own views. Ultimately, Navarro admitted that he had invented the character and quoted him in his book to endorse it. This incident was previously confirmed by the New York Times.
American joke: I quote myself
This is not the first time he has made such unreliable economic remarks.
When told in 2016 that the Tax Policy Center’s assessment of the Trump economic plan co-authored by Navarro said it would reduce federal revenues by $600 billion and reduce economic growth in the long term, he said the analysis showed “a high degree of analytical and political misconduct.” When the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that the Trump economic plan would cost millions of Americans their jobs, he said the Peterson Institute’s writers “weaved a false narrative and made up some false numbers.” According to MIT economist Simon Johnson, the projections in the economic plan paper written during the Trump campaign “are based on such unrealistic assumptions that they seem to come from another planet. If the United States actually adopts the Trump plan, the result will be an immediate and unavoidable disaster.”
When 370 economists, including 19 Nobel laureates, signed a letter in November 2016 warning against Trump’s economic policies, Navarro said the letter was “a disgrace to the offshoring faction of the economics profession that insists that bad trade deals are good for the United States.”
This also explains why it has previously been criticized and even strongly hostile by people in the mainstream economics community.
In addition, according to @MikeZiav 59604, a user on the X platform who claims to be Navarro’s student , “ I can tell you responsibly that he has economic theories, but he himself does not understand economics at all, let alone business. He is just a nerd. And calling his theories right-wing is a joke. His theories are extreme left, 100% planned economy.”
It seems that the Trump administration chose to achieve low inflation through high tariffs, and Navarro played a vital role in this decision.
Under the guidance of such a seemingly China expert but in fact an academic fraudster, can the US government push the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and reduce the US inflation rate? The answer will emerge after multiple parties wrestle.
Recommended listening:
《Daily exclusive interview with Navarro, chief architect of Trumps trade war》
