Trump’s tariff man Peter Navarro is down but not out

Elon Musk calls the scrappy trade hawk a ‘moron’, but Donald Trump values his loyalty and hard-line stances.

Peter Navarro is loathed by Wall Street but he has the President’s ear.

Wall Street loathes him. His policy prescriptions give Republican lawmakers heartburn. Elon Musk thinks he’s a moron.

And after President Trump paused many new tariffs on Wednesday, the man he calls “my Peter” may be down. But he’s not out.

Apart from Trump, no one is more associated with the tariffs rocking the globe than Peter Navarro, the scrappy trade hawk who helped design the much-maligned formula for Trump’s reciprocal levies. He has Trump’s ear and his loyalty: As the president privately reminded a group in the Oval Office recently, Navarro went to jail for him.

Navarro, 75 years old, has been an unflagging influence as markets convulse and recession fears grow, helping craft Trump’s tariff policy and protect it against moderating voices in the administration. A former college professor and California Democrat plucked from obscurity to advise the 2016 campaign on China, Navarro’s view has held sway with the president for years.

“Peter has endured because he believes the same things the president does—that America is a country worth saving, that the American worker is the finest in the world and that the globalists are both wrong and evil,” said Steve Bannon, the Trump ally and economic populist. Bannon called criticism of Navarro “really veiled attacks on President Trump.”

Navarro’s influence—and the limits of it—were on display in recent days. He had a central role in designing Trump’s reciprocal trade action, which hiked US tariffs to levels not seen since before World War II, before being paused by Trump on Wednesday afternoon. That abrupt shift, effectively repudiating Navarro’s hard-line stance, sent stocks soaring and calmed nerves on Wall Street and in Washington.

President Trump flanked by adviser Peter Navarro, Picture: AFP

Navarro, like Trump, spun it as a win, saying in a brief interview that it was “one of the greatest days in American trade history” and vindicated Trump’s approach. “The nervous Nellies on Wall Street, in the media and the business community should take a lesson from what happened.”

Allies say his job is to espouse a default option: Either make a deal or face the worst. Navarro “always gives President Trump the hardest, toughest options—that provides leverage,” said Bannon. While critics would like to see him sidelined, Trump likes having opposing views, people close to the president say, so he’s likely to continue to play the attack dog.

Navarro spearheaded the equation used to calculate the reciprocal tariff rates, said people with knowledge of the discussions, which largely based tariffs on the US trade deficit with targeted nations. Trump ultimately chose that approach instead of more sophisticated calculations from the Council of Economic Advisers and the US Trade Representative’s office, said one of the people, though the leaders of those agencies eventually came around to the Navarro approach, which was also pushed forward by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Ahead of Wednesday’s pause, many Republicans on Capitol Hill had been openly nudging Trump to cut deals with other countries to lower tariffs as soon as possible, in contrast to Navarro, who wrote this week in the Financial Times that the tariffs are nonnegotiable. Administration officials said that 75 countries have reached out to the White House about a possible trade settlement.

“There are voices in the administration that rather than take a deal are saying, ‘We want to have tariffs as a long-term permanent feature of the economy.’ I think that’d be a mistake,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said on Fox News Tuesday night. When asked Wednesday if he was referring to Navarro, he said “I don’t think it’s productive for me to throw rocks at anyone in particular.” He praised Musk, who has said he would like minimal tariffs worldwide.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.) said Navarro’s conviction on tariffs makes him uncomfortable. “I always have distrust of people who are certain of everything,” he said. He joked he has PTSD from dealing with Navarro in the first Trump administration.

Cramer said he couldn’t stop laughing while watching Navarro on CNBC and Kevin Hassett—director of the National Economic Council—on Fox News in dueling segments earlier this week because their messages were so contradictory. Navarro is an advocate for protectionist trade policy and permanent tariffs, while Hassett says the tariffs are a negotiating tool to ultimately lower duties and barriers.

“I’m on a Delta flight laughing so hard, people must think, ‘He’s watching business news and you’d think he’s watching cartoons,’” Cramer said.

Peter Navarro and Elon Musk have sparred over trade policy. Picture: AFP

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who opposes Trump’s tariffs, said Navarro is giving Trump bad advice. “He’s wrong. He’s a walking economic fallacy,” Paul said.

Democrats have also piled on, casting Navarro as the architect of the Trump tariff plan. Navarro “is absolutely out of his mind about what tariffs are and what they do and how harmful they are with the American people, and yet he seems to be running the show,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.).

Among Trump allies, Musk has taken the hardest shots, mocking Navarro’s Harvard pedigree and implying he lacks hands-on experience in the economy. “He ain’t built s—,” Musk wrote Saturday on X, the social-media platform he owns. Navarro hit back, calling the Tesla executive a “car assembler” and implying he is putting his bottom line ahead of Trump’s vision.

“Navarro is truly a moron,” Musk responded Tuesday, calling him “dumber than a sack of bricks.” Navarro, Musk said, should consult “Ron Vara,” alluding to the fabricated expert Navarro’s books have quoted. The name is an anagram of Navarro, who told The Wall Street Journal in 2019 it was “a whimsical device and pen name I’ve used throughout the years for purely entertainment value, not as a source of fact.”

Trump shrugged off the quarrel, aides said. “Boys will be boys and we will let their public sparring continue,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Musk declined to comment. In a statement, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Navarro’s “brilliant insights make him a critical asset for President Trump’s historic effort to finally address America’s national emergency of chronic trade deficits.”

Navarro was often in the center of heated policy disputes during the first term. Early on, advisers such as former Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn limited Navarro’s influence, keeping him out of key trade meetings. Whenever Navarro went near the Oval Office, aides were instructed to call the chief of staff.

Still, Navarro found ways to get to Trump. The president, wanting to scratch his protectionist itch, would summon Navarro to meetings by saying, “Where’s my Peter?” Trump put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and launched the first trade war with China. Navarro also advised the president to threaten to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact that was renegotiated. Trump began calling himself “tariff man,” and Navarro, according to officials at the time, presented him with an image of President William McKinley, who in the late 1800s raised protective tariffs to promote American industry.

Navarro proved his loyalty in historic fashion—becoming the first White House official to be imprisoned for contempt over stonewalling the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Navarro was sentenced to four months at Federal Correctional Institution Miami, and became a folk hero to Trump’s MAGA movement.

On the day last year Navarro was released, he flew to Milwaukee and appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention. “The J6 committee demanded that I betray Donald John Trump to save my own skin,” Navarro said amid thunderous applause. “I refused.”

Wall Street Journal