Peter Navarro is the picture of a law abiding American citizen. He's a 72 year old retired business school professor. He's got a Ph.D. In economics from Harvard University. His most recent job was extremely white collar. He served at the as the white House trade adviser in the last presidential administration. [00:00:16] Famous for his tough stance on China, he's never been charged with a crime. He's never trafficked fentanyl, for example, from Mexico. In fact, his hobby is yoga and riding his bicycle. In short, Peter Navarro does not seem like a criminal, much less a danger to this nation. And yet, last Friday, federal agents arrested Peter Navarro [00:00:35] at Reagan National Airport in Washington. The picture of law abiding citizen. You heard it. But just four months after Peter Navarro, that man you just heard Tucker Carlson [00:00:50] talk about, was released from prison. He's now set to join Trump's White House yet again as senior counselor for trade and Manufacturing. This morning, Trump made the announcement on Truth Social writing. I'm pleased to announce that Peter Navarro, a man who was treated horribly [00:01:09] by the deep state or whatever else you would like to call it, will serve as my senior counselor for trade and manufacturing during my first term. Few were more effective or tenacious than Peter in enforcing my two sacred rules buy American, hire American. [00:01:28] He helped me renegotiate unfair trade deals like NAFTA and the Korea-us Free Trade Agreement chorus, and moved every one of my tariff and trade actions fast. Let's pause for a second. Treated horribly by the deep state, Navarro was convicted [00:01:47] for defying a subpoena from the House. January 6th Committee. The House panel investigating the Capitol riot issued a subpoena in February 2022, requiring Navarro to appear before the committee in March. The panel accused Navarro, Steve Bannon and others of developing [00:02:04] a plan to delay Congress's certification of the 2020 election. Navarro refused to give testimony or produce documents in compliance with the subpoena. In June that year, a federal grand jury indicted Navarro on two counts of contempt of Congress last year, [00:02:19] including one count for refusing to appear for a deposition and another for refusing to produce the documents. Navarro tried to argue he had executive privilege, but according to CNN, he has never been able to show executive privilege would have applied [00:02:37] for the information he had. He served for months with access to TV, email and phone calls. But Trump continued on, adding in a second post the senior counselor position leverages Peter's broad range of white House experience [00:02:53] while harnessing his extensive policy, analytic and media skills. His mission will be to help Successfully advance and communicate the Trump manufacturing tariff and trade agendas. Peter is not just a superb Harvard trained, trained economist. [00:03:10] He is a noted author of more than a dozen best selling books on strategic business management and unfair trade. He did a superb job for the American people in my first term. Peter will do even better as senior counselor to protect American workers and truly make American manufacturing great again. [00:03:29] John, we'll get into the trade consequences and the tariff debate next. But on this appointment, this is yet another Trump loyalist who's getting rewarded for defying subpoenas for, you know, thumbing their nose at the standard democratic process [00:03:48] or the law and order process. What do you make of this appointment now? Yeah. No, I mean, I think you laid it out. There's different categories of people that he's putting in his cabinet. And this is very much just this is a guy that I've known and worked with for a really long time. He is a loyalist. He was willing to break the law, you know, to try to help me out. [00:04:06] Basically, he's one of that class. He also, like, at least theoretically, has something like experience relevant to the position, which you can't take for granted amongst Trump Trump's nominees. Often he's choosing people that have literally no experience with what they're covering. [00:04:21] So I guess to that extent makes sense. But yeah, a lot about the way that he's presenting him is ridiculous. The idea that he was unfairly treated by the deep state when he willfully broke the law and paid the consequences for it. Not even that much. Consequences. I think many people would have gladly enjoyed a four month stay in a nice hotel. [00:04:39] Basically, like he did. That's that's what happened. I also just have to point out the Donald Trump two rules thing the buy American, hire American. Like, dude, your products aren't made in America. What are you talking about? Have you checked the tag on your ties? [00:04:54] Didn't we talk about on TDR? His guitars? Like they had a section on the website where someone's like, so are these like Made in America? And they're like, we don't want to say like, no, they're not there. Well, John, what they said was the designer was an American and a veteran, [00:05:15] but I don't know if he saw he was either later that day or the next day they got hit with a cease and desist. Yeah. By Gibson for copying the Les Paul body shape. So, like, they didn't design anything. They just stole something. Yeah. [00:05:30] And I'm glad that story came out, because I didn't even know that you could copyright the shape of a guitar, but apparently you can. Yeah. So look, I don't he's the he's the sort of person Trump wants. He's going to get in there. He's going to cause a lot of, you know, tension and problems with China. You know, anything that goes wrong during the next four years, [00:05:46] they're going to blame on China. So it'll be convenient that we'll be at an all a constant state of near war with them. So they'll appreciate that. And other than that, he's willing to break the law for Trump. Trump wants that. I don't think he needs to worry as much about investigations as he did the first time around since they've been effectively outlawed. [00:06:03] But still, it's good to have loyalists around, so I'm not super surprised by this nomination. Yeah, let's let's get into the consequences of this nomination. You know, Trump has been very adamant throughout his campaign that tariffs were going to be a key priority for his upcoming administration. [00:06:20] And since winning the election, Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, two of the US's closest allies, as well as an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imports. He's also raised the prospect of imposing [00:06:35] 100% tariffs on Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa if they don't drop plans to create a common currency to compete with the dollar. So how will Navarro play into this? [00:06:50] Well, it's actually a huge indication that those tariffs Trump is threatening will actually come to fruition in his first administration. Navarro, who was a trade and manufacturing advisor, pushed aggressively for tariffs while downplaying the risk of starting potential trade wars. [00:07:06] Navarro quickly established himself as a polarizing figure in both style and substance, railing against what he called the globalist advisors that Trump brought into his administration. At times, Navarro's critics in the administration, including some who weren't as hawkish on trade, blocked him from key meetings. [00:07:24] Navarro persisted, helping animate the tough on China posture that led to Trump's trade war and heavy tariffs. His role included work to boost domestic manufacturing, and during the pandemic, Navarro helped marshal the government response. [00:07:40] Additionally, Navarro often used fiery language that upset U.S. Allies. In 2018, after a dispute between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Navarro said, there's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him [00:08:01] in the back on the way out the door. While Navarro did apologize for the comments, the fact that he's allowed back into the white House with a promotion probably is not the best sign for our trade relations. - What do you think, John? - Yeah, no definitely not. [00:08:16] But but it is a sign that we're going back to the way things were under Trump the first time. So, you know, at least we have the benefit of as a, as a people and as a country of it should be a little bit less surprising this time around. Like we saw the trade wars that he launched the first time we [00:08:31] saw the damage that it caused. We also, by the way, saw the way that he tried to deal with some of the damage with, you know, throwing money at the farmers and things like that, which means the Democrats, if they're paying attention, maybe could head off some of what he's going to do when his plans inevitably fall apart, as they're, like, structurally set up to, [00:08:50] it will be worse. You know, the tariffs that he's talking about are significantly higher. He's going to be putting them on far more countries. The damage both to people's purchasing power as well as the exports of a whole bunch of industries is going to be far more significant. And Peter Navarro seems like exactly the sort of person you'd want [00:09:08] if that was your plan. Yeah. Let's just for a second talk about what this would look like. So they're talking about imposing these tariffs on companies or countries, rather that we rely on heavily for a wide array of goods. [00:09:23] China specifically. Now, of course, some of the rhetoric is xenophobic and just racist in many ways. It's also from a position that they don't want China to be a global power, [00:09:39] or to surpass the US in global power. And I don't foresee maybe, maybe. But I don't think China would ever surpass the US in global power. It might be a peer and they don't even want that. But it's getting close and they're upset by that. [00:09:55] But imposing these tariffs. And I think the Democrats could have done a better job in framing this as a sales tax because it's going to increase prices. People still are going to buy these things. They're going to need these things because American manufacturing as a result of NAFTA has been so weakened. [00:10:13] And this goal, like they say, is to revive American manufacturing. But what is that going to look like in a way that keeps costs down because they're relying on largely labor that is underpaid in countries like China and throughout the South, [00:10:28] throughout Southeast Asia or the global South, it's going to result in if they do bring manufacturing back, a lot of automation, fewer people are going to be making things. A lot of machines are going to be making things, and that is going to be disastrous. [00:10:44] So you have these people who are going to benefit greatly from American manufacturing, but it's all going to be at the top. The things that we make here through. And this is something that Andrew Yang talked about and people didn't take him seriously. The threat of automation is very real, and we will see it play out here [00:11:00] if these plans go into place and we do see a shift back to American manufacturing, it's not going to be people working these machines or people making things. It's going to be fully automated. And that's that's really bad in the long run. [00:11:15] Well, you know, to the extent that that's going to happen, I would say that at least we have the silver lining that Elon Musk is involved in it, because if that's the case, it will be set up in a way that it'll almost necessarily fall apart almost instantly. And then people will be required to come in and clean up the mess like they did with the Cybertruck. [00:11:31] So maybe it won't be as bad as you think since we have, you know, our billionaire co-president. But yeah, no. Look, jokes aside, you're 100% right. I am super worried about that. Now, what you could do if if Donald Trump was actually the figurehead of a true populist movement, then you could have him say he could be honest [00:11:50] about what the tariffs are going to do, that it is effectively a sales tax, but one with a medium term goal that might or might not happen. But even if it happens, it's going to be incredibly damaging for a number of years. He could be honest about that, which he's not going to be. And then you could also have him say, and we're going to bring back the jobs. [00:12:07] But I have a suite of protections for workers to make sure that the backbone of our economy, you know, the men and women, although he'd probably just focus on the former that will work in these factories, have the jobs and there's protections against needless, you know, [00:12:23] automation or automation and all that. They could do that. There are ways that you could manage this. I just don't think that Donald Trump, let alone the coterie of billionaires that he's surrounded himself with care at all about that. Yeah. Absolutely not. [00:12:38] They do not care about the working person. But like you say, that's that's populism, baby. Hey, thanks for watching the video. We really appreciate it, guys. 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