News site of the year

World
  1. Home
  2. World
  3. Race to the White House

'Don't poke the panda': Donald Trump picks 'Death by China' author Peter Navarro for trade advisory role

Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump named Peter Navarro, an economist who has urged a hard line on trade with China, to head a newly formed White House National Trade Council, the transition team said on Wednesday.

Navarro is an academic and one-time investment adviser who has authored a number of popular books and made a film describing China's threat to the US economy as well as Beijing's desire to become the dominant economic and military power in Asia.

Up Next

Trump vows to cut plane costs

President-elect Donald Trump has signalled an apparent reversal of a decades-long reduction of the nation's atomic weapons.
Video duration
00:42

More World News Videos

null
Video duration
01:29

Trump cruises to Electoral College victory
null
Video duration
00:42

Trump vows to cut plane costs

null
Video duration
00:51

Teen with fake gun shot in the head
null
Video duration
03:39

Unsafe transport a death-trap for ...
null
Video duration
01:20

Prince Charles calls for tolerance

null
Video duration
00:45

Dashcam: Berlin Christmas market
More videos

Trump cruises to Electoral College victory

There were many protesters as Donald Trump wins the Electoral College vote ensuring that the billionaire will become America's 45th president.

Trump's team praised Navarro in a statement as a "visionary" economist who would "develop trade policies that shrink our trade deficit, expand our growth, and help stop the exodus of jobs from our shores".

Trump, a Republican, made trade a centrepiece of his presidential campaign and railed against what he said were bad deals the United States had made with other countries. He has threatened to hit Mexico and China with high tariffs once he takes office on January 20.

Related Content

Navarro, 67, is a professor at University of California, Irvine, and advised Trump during the campaign. He has authored several books including Death by China: How America Lost its Manufacturing Base, which was made into a documentary film.

As well as describing what he sees as America's losing economic war with China, Navarro has highlighted concerns over environmental issues related to Chinese imports and the theft of US intellectual property.

Advertisement

While Trump in the statement praised the "clarity" of Navarro's arguments and the "thoroughness of his research," few other economists have endorsed Navarro's ideas.

Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, likened a tax and trade paper authored by Navarro and Wilbur Ross, who has been named as Trump's commerce secretary, to "the type of magical thinking best reserved for fictional realities" for what he said was its flawed economic analysis.

"Don't poke the panda"

Navarro has also suggested a stepped-up engagement with Taiwan, including assistance with a submarine development program.

He argued that Washington should stop referring to the "one China" policy, but stopped short of suggesting it should recognise Taipei, saying: "There is no need to unnecessarily poke the panda."

China considers Taiwan a renegade province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control.

After his November 8 election win, Trump stoked China's ire when he took a telephone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in a break with decades of precedent that cast doubt on his incoming administration's commitment to Beijing's "one China" policy.

In an opinion piece in Foreign Policy magazine in November, Navarro and another Trump adviser, Alexander Gray, reiterated the president-elect's opposition to major trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"Trump will never again sacrifice the US economy on the altar of foreign policy by entering into bad trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, allowing China into the World Trade Organisation, and passing the proposed TPP," Navarro and Gray wrote. "These deals only weaken our manufacturing base and ability to defend ourselves and our allies."

Trump has vowed to pull the United States out of the TPP, a free-trade pact aimed at linking a dozen Pacific Rim nations that President Barack Obama signed in February. It has not been ratified by the US Senate.

The president-elect has also vowed to renegotiate the NAFTA pact with Canada and Mexico, saying it had cost American jobs.

Billionaire Carl Icahn joins the team

Billionaire Carl Icahn will advise Trump on rescinding what the activist investor called "excessive regulation" on US businesses, the president-elect's transition team also announced.

Icahn will serve as a special adviser, not a federal employee, and he will not have specific duties nor will he take a salary.

The pick could draw scrutiny because Icahn, whose major investments include insurer American International Group and oil refining business CVR Energy, could help shape rules meant to police Wall Street and protect the environment.

In the transition team statement released on Wednesday, Icahn said it was time to "break free of excessive regulation" and let businesses create jobs.

Icahn, an early supporter of Trump's White House bid who has at times been outspoken about regulation, has already helped the transition team weigh candidates to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has held meetings at his New York City office, not far from Trump Tower but away from reporters staked out there, people familiar with the talks said.

Reuters

Related Content

0 comments