Last summer, Harvard-trained economist Peter Navarro was released from a federal prison in Miami just in time to fly to Milwaukee and deliver a fiery speech at the Republican National Convention.
“The January 6 committee demanded that I betray Donald John Trump to save my own skin,” he bellowed, referring to the Congressional subpoena he ignored, resulting in a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress.
“I refused!” The crowd roared.
Navarro’s rock star moment illustrated how the former economics professor, who has returned to the White House as President Donald Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing policy, had become Maga royalty.
“There is a clear premium put on loyalty in this administration,” said one Washington lobbyist. “And there’s no doubting, whatsoever, Navarro’s loyalty to Trump — that’s why he’ll always have a lot of influence.”
An often-thwarted adviser in Trump’s first administration, Navarro has been catapulted into the trade hot seat, orchestrating an early suite of tariffs and probes that bear the hallmarks of his particular enthusiasms.
These include protecting the US steel and aluminium industry against subsidised Chinese metal, putting tariffs on all Chinese imports, and using sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs in an effort to reduce the country’s trade deficit and boost manufacturing.
Whereas in the last administration Navarro was often hamstrung by more free-market minded Trump advisers such as Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin or National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, he faces far less opposition in Trump 2.0.
People familiar with the administration’s inner workings say Navarro is working closely with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, and Jamieson Greer, the president’s pick for trade representative.
Lutnick, a billionaire Wall Street financier, has become an unexpected advocate of tariffs, the people say, while Greer, a trade lawyer, has long been a proponent of tariffs and other protectionist trade measures.
People describe Trump as trusting Navarro, referring to him as “my Peter”, and allowing him broad leeway over trade policy.
Often described as a “trade hawk”, Navarro has long been known for his protectionist streak and hostility to China. In his 2011 book Death by China, he argued Beijing violated global trade rules by using illegal export subsidies and manipulating its currency.
During Trump’s first time in the Oval Office, Navarro campaigned internally for the imposition of high tariffs on Chinese imports, and in 2018 pushed him to block visas for Chinese students — a move the president declined to make.
“He’s a guy who basically sees an existential threat to the US economically, militarily, geopolitically from China,” said one person who has observed him for decades. “He is a guy who is super focused on that.”
But the freewheeling Navarro also has a reputation for occasional flights of fantasy. In 2019, it emerged he had embedded a fictional version of himself — Ron Vara — into many of his books on trade and economic policy.
The fictional Vara is quoted in his 2006 book The Coming China Wars as saying: “You’ve got to be nuts to eat Chinese food.” In Death by China, Vara is quoted as saying: “Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cell phone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel.”
Hunter Morgen, who was a special adviser to Trump during the first administration and worked for Navarro for three years during that time, described his motivation as coming from “a place of love for the forgotten men and women of this country”.
“He understands that strong trade and industrial policy is the path to domestic dominance,” Morgen, now a partner at the lobbying shop Ballard Partners, said.
Like Trump, Navarro has not always been a loyal soldier of the Republican party. He made several failed attempts to gain political office in California, including running as an independent candidate for mayor of San Diego in 1992 and making a bid to win California’s 49th congressional district as a Democrat in 1996.
During his 1996 bid for office, Navarro gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention in support of Hillary Clinton in which he pledged to support Medicare and social security, abortion rights for women and robust environmental rules to protect clean water and clean air.
Almost 20 years later, Navarro fell into the orbit of the nascent Trump campaign, at a time when mainstream political pundits still doubted his ability to win the White House.
“A lot of people found an opportunity to work their way into a political infrastructure that folks never thought would really morph into a real presidential campaign,” said one person, familiar with those early days.
“Trump’s message back then was consistent with Navarro’s belief that policy elites in Washington DC are leading you astray,” the person said. “It was less ideological and more cultural, and it makes sense that he came in at that time.”
Others describe Trump as a “vessel” for Navarro to be the architect of his own deeply held economic beliefs.
“Trump [has] . . . given Navarro some ability to deal with this thing that has been a many decades-long motivating life mission,” one person said.
