Peter Navarro

Peter Kent Navarro (born July 15, 1949) is an American economist who served in the Trump administration, first as Deputy Assistant to the President and director of the short-lived White House National Trade Council, then as Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in the new Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; he was also named the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator. He is a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, and the author of ''Death by China'', among other publications. Navarro ran unsuccessfully for office in San Diego, California, five times. Navarro, who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was the first former White House official ever imprisoned on a contempt-of-Congress conviction.

Navarro's views on trade were considered outside the mainstream of economic thought. A strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits, Navarro is well known as a critic of Germany and China, and has accused both nations of currency manipulation. He called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, imposing high tariffs, and "repatriating global supply chains.", which the succeeding Biden administration kept in place or implemented even more extensively. In May 2024, the Biden administration raised tariffs on Chinese imports, doubling for solar cells and sharply increasing for steel, aluminum, and medical equipment. Navarro is also a vocal opponent of multilateral free trade agreements such as NAFTA.

As a Trump administration official, Navarro encouraged President Donald Trump to implement trade-protectionist policies. Navarro said his role in the administration is to "provide the underlying analytics that confirm [Trump's] intuition [on trade]. And his intuition is always right in these matters." In 2018, as the Trump administration was implementing such policies, Navarro argued that no country would retaliate against U.S. tariffs "for the simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world". Shortly after the implementation of the tariffs, other countries did implement retaliatory tariffs against the United States, leading to trade wars.

During his final year in the Trump administration, Navarro was involved in the administration's COVID-19 response. Early on, he issued private warnings within the administration about the threat posed by the virus, but downplayed the risks in public. He publicly clashed with Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as Navarro advocated hydroxychloroquine as a treatment of COVID-19 and condemned various public health measures to stop the spread of the virus.

After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump refused to concede, Navarro advanced conspiracy theories of election fraud and in February 2022 was subpoenaed twice by Congress. One subpoena required him to produce documents to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack; the other subpoena required him to give testimony to the committee. Navarro refused to comply, effectively ignoring both subpoenas, and was referred to the Justice Department. On June 2, 2022, a grand jury indicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress.

On September 7, 2023, he was convicted on both counts, and on January 25, 2024, he was sentenced to four months in jail and fined $9,500. He served his sentence at the minimum-security camp inside of the Miami Federal Correctional Institute in a section for elderly inmates. Navarro was released on July 17, 2024. Within hours of being released from prison, Navarro gave a prime time speech endorsing Donald Trump for a second term at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Provided by Wikipedia