Peter Navarro
Peter Kent Navarro is an American economist who has been the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing to U.S. president Donald Trump since January 2025. He previously served in the first Trump administration, first as the director of the White House National Trade Council, then as the director of the new Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.
Navarro is a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business of the University of California, Irvine. Navarro ran unsuccessfully for office in San Diego, California, five times. In January 2017, he joined the first Trump administration as an advisor on trade. As a senior administration official, Navarro encouraged President Trump to implement protectionist trade policies. In particular, he advocated for hardline policies towards China and was a key figure behind the administration's trade war against China; he was sanctioned by China after leaving office. During his final year in the Trump administration, Navarro was involved in the administration's COVID-19 response. He was also named the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator in 2020. 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 for COVID-19 and condemned various public health measures that aimed to stop the spread of the virus.
Navarro sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election and in February 2022 was subpoenaed twice by Congress. Navarro refused to comply and was referred to the Justice Department. In 2022, a grand jury indicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress. In 2023, Navarro was convicted on both counts, and in 2024, he was sentenced to four months in jail, becoming the first former White House official imprisoned on a contempt-of-Congress conviction. In January 2025, he was appointed as the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing for President Trump in his second term. In his second term, Navarro became a key official behind Trump's trade policies, including the imposition of tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico as well as the "reciprocal tariff" policy announced in April 2025.
Navarro's views on trade are significantly outside the mainstream of economic thought, and are widely considered fringe by other economists. A strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits, Navarro is well known for his hardline views on China, describing the country as an existential threat to the United States. He has accused China of unfair trade practices and currency manipulation and called for more confrontational policies towards the country. He has called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, setting high tariffs, and "repatriating global supply chains". He is also a vocal opponent of free trade agreements. Navarro has written books including The Coming China Wars and Death by China. In several of his books, Navarro quoted a fictional economist named "Ron Vara", an anagram of his surname, as a source of information.
Early life and education
Navarro was born on July 15, 1949, in Cambridge, Massachusetts to an Italian-American family. His father, Albert "Al" Navarro, a saxophonist and clarinetist, led a house band, which played summers in New Hampshire and winters in Florida. After his parents divorced when he was 9 or 10, he lived with his mother, Evelyn Littlejohn, a Saks Fifth Avenue secretary, in Palm Beach, Florida. As a teen, he lived with his mother and brother in a one-bedroom apartment in Bethesda, Maryland. Navarro attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.Navarro attended Tufts University on an academic scholarship, graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then spent three years from 1973 to 1976 in the U.S. Peace Corps, serving in Thailand, traveling to Laos, South Korea, Japan, India, Myanmar and Malaysia during his holiday breaks. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Navarro recalled listening to Voice of America and hearing Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign on a "message of hope". He received a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1979, and a PhD in economics from Harvard in 1986 under the supervision of Richard E. Caves. His doctoral dissertation was titled "A theoretical and empirical investigation of corporate charity motives".
Career
Academic career
From 1981 through 1985, he was a research associate at Harvard's Energy and Environmental Policy Center. From 1985 through 1988, he taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of San Diego. In 1989 he moved to the University of California, Irvine, as a professor of economics and public policy. He continued on the UC Irvine faculty for more than 20 years and is now a professor emeritus. He has worked on energy issues and the relationship between the United States and Asia. He has received multiple teaching awards for MBA courses he has taught.As a doctoral student in 1984, Navarro wrote a book entitled The Policy Game: How Special Interests and Ideologues are Stealing America, which claimed that special interest groups had led the United States to "a point in its history where it cannot grow and prosper." In the book, he also called for greater workers' compensation to help those who had lost jobs to trade and foreign competition and wrote that "as history has painfully taught, once protectionist wars begin, the likely result is a deadly and well-nigh unstoppable downward spiral by the entire world economy". His doctoral dissertation on why corporations donate to charity is one of his most cited works. He has also done research on the topic of wind energy with Frank Harris, a former student of his.
Campaigns for public office
While teaching at UC Irvine, Navarro unsuccessfully ran for office five times in San Diego, California. During his campaigns, he primarily focused on limiting the number of houses in the city as well as the number of immigrants. In 1992, he ran for mayor, finishing first in the primary, but lost with 48% to Susan Golding in the runoff. Navarro ran on a no-growth platform during his mayoral campaign. He paid $4,000 in fines and court costs for violating city and state election laws.In 1993, Navarro ran for San Diego city council, and in 1994 for San Diego County board of supervisors, losing each time. In 1996, he ran for the 49th Congressional District as the Democratic Party nominee, touting himself as an environmental activist, but lost to Republican Brian Bilbray, 52.7% to 41.9%. In 2001, Navarro ran in a special election to fill the District 6 San Diego city council seat but lost in a special election with 7.85% of the vote.
Publications on China
Navarro has written more than a dozen books on various topics in economics, specializing in the balance of trade. He has published peer-reviewed economics research on energy policy, charity, deregulation, and the economics of trash collection. The Economist magazine wrote that Navarro "is a prolific writer, but has no publications in top-tier academic journals" and "his research interests are broader than the average economist's." In 2001 Navarro started writing investing books including If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks: The Investor's Guide to Profiting from News and Other Market-Moving Events.Navarro focused his attention on China in the mid-2000s. Navarro has said that he started to examine China when he noticed that his former students at UC Irvine were losing jobs, concluding that China was at fault and said that "all roads began leading to Beijing". He wrote that China was flooding the U.S. with cheap goods, "thereby beginning to put Americans like my MBA students out of work." He then tasked his students to research how China was able to price their products more cheaply compared to the rest of the world.
His first publication on the subject is the 2006 book The Coming China Wars, a book published by Financial Times in 2006 In the book, Navarro examined China as an emerging world power confronting challenges at home and abroad as it struggles to exert itself in the global market. He discussed how China's role in international commerce created conflicts with nations worldwide over energy, natural resources, the environment, intellectual property, and other issues. A review in Publishers Weekly described the book as "comprehensive" and "contemporary" and concluded that it "will teach readers to understand the dragon, just not how to vanquish it".
File:Professor Peter Navarro of the Business School at University of California, Irvine talks his work "Death by China" and how China cheats in the world trade system @ University of Michigan-4.jpg|thumb|Appearing at the University of Michigan in 2012, Navarro discusses his work, Death by China, arguing China cheats in the world trade system.
In Death by China, published in 2011, Navarro and co-author Greg Autry argued that China violates fair trade by "illegal export subsidies and currency manipulation, effectively flooding the U.S. markets" and unfairly making it "virtually impossible" for American companies to compete. It is a critique of "global capitalism", including foreign labor practices and environmental protection. Currency manipulation and subsidies are stated as reasons that "American companies cannot compete because they're not competing with Chinese companies, they're competing with the Chinese government." The Economist wrote that "the core allegations Mr. Navarro makes against China are not all that controversial. He accuses China of keeping its currency cheap" and "He deplores China's practice of forcing American firms to hand over intellectual property as a condition of access to its market. He claims that Chinese firms pollute the environment more freely and employ workers in far worse conditions than American rules allow." In 2012, Navarro directed and produced Death by China, a documentary film based on his book. The film, described as "fervently anti-China", was narrated by Martin Sheen.