Peter Navarro facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Peter Navarro
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Navarro in 2018
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| Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy | |
| In office April 29, 2017 – January 20, 2021 |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Director of the National Trade Council | |
| In office January 20, 2017 – April 29, 2017 |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Peter Kent Navarro
July 15, 1949 Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican (1989–1991, 2018–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
Democratic (before 1986, 1994–2018) Independent (1986–1989, 1991–1994) |
| Spouse |
Leslie Lebon
(m. 2001; div. 2020) |
| Education | Tufts University (BA) Harvard University (MPA, PhD) |
| Criminal status | In prison |
| Conviction(s) | 2× contempt of Congress (2023) |
| Criminal penalty | 4 months in prison and ,500 fine |
| Imprisoned at | Federal Correctional Institution, Miami, 2024 |
Peter Kent Navarro (born July 15, 1949) is an American economist who served in the Trump administration, first as Deputy Assistant to the President and director of the short-lived White House National Trade Council, then as Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in the new Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; he was also named the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator. He is a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, and the author of Death by China, among other publications. Navarro ran unsuccessfully for office in San Diego, California, five times. Navarro, who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, is the only former White House official ever imprisoned on a contempt-of-Congress conviction.
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 as a critic of Germany and China, and has accused both nations of currency manipulation. 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 multilateral free trade agreements such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
As a Trump administration official, Navarro encouraged President Donald Trump to implement trade-protectionist policies. Navarro said his role in the administration is to "provide the underlying analytics that confirm [Trump's] intuition [on trade]. And his intuition is always right in these matters." In 2018, as the Trump administration was implementing such policies, Navarro argued that no country would retaliate against U.S. tariffs "for the simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world". Shortly after the implementation of the tariffs, other countries did implement retaliatory tariffs against the United States, leading to trade wars.
During his final year in the Trump administration, Navarro was involved in the administration's COVID-19 response. 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 of COVID-19 and condemned various public health measures to stop the spread of the virus.
After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump refused to concede, Navarro advanced conspiracy theories of election fraud and in February 2022 was subpoenaed twice by Congress. One subpoena required him to produce documents to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack; the other subpoena required him to give testimony to the committee. Navarro refused to comply, effectively ignoring both subpoenas, and was referred to the Justice Department. On June 2, 2022, a grand jury indicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress. On September 7, 2023, he was convicted on both counts, and on January 25, 2024, he was sentenced to four months in jail and fined $9,500. He is serving his sentence at Miami Federal Corrections Institute and is due for release on July 17, 2024.
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Early life and education
Navarro was born on July 15, 1949, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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 in Bethesda, Maryland in a one-bedroom apartment with his mother and brother. 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 in the U.S. Peace Corps, serving in Thailand. He earned a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1979, and a PhD in economics from Harvard under the supervision of Richard E. Caves in 1986.
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 worker's compensation to help those who had lost jobs to trade and foreign competition. His doctoral dissertation on why corporations donate to charity is one of his most cited works. He has also done research in the topic of wind energy with Frank Harris, a former student of his.
Publications on China
Navarro has written more than a dozen books on various topics in economics and specializing in issues of 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 The Coming China Wars, a book published by Financial Times in 2006, 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 was creating conflicts with nations around the world over energy, natural resources, the environment, intellectual property, and other issues. A review in Publishers Weekly described the book as "comprehensive" and "contemporary" and concludes that it "will teach readers to understand the dragon, just not how to vanquish it".
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 notes, correctly, 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.
From 2011 until 2016, Navarro was a frequent guest on the radio program The John Batchelor Show.
Early political career
Campaigns for public office
While teaching at UC Irvine, Navarro unsuccessfully ran for office five times in San Diego, California. In 1992, he ran for mayor, finishing first (38.2%) in the primary, but lost with 48% to Susan Golding in the runoff. During his mayoral campaign, Navarro ran on a no-growth platform. 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.
Political positions
Navarro's political affiliations and policy positions have been described as "hotly disputed and across the spectrum." While he lived in Massachusetts studying for his PhD at Harvard, he was a registered Democrat. When he moved to California in 1986, he was initially registered as nonpartisan, and became a registered Republican in 1989. By 1991, he had again re-registered as an Independent, and carried that affiliation during the 1992 San Diego mayoral election. Around this time, he still considered himself a conservative Republican.
Navarro rejoined the Democratic Party in 1994 and remained a Democrat during each of his subsequent political campaigns. In 1996, while he was running for Congress, Navarro was endorsed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and spoke at the 1996 Democratic Convention, saying, "I'm proud to be carrying the Clinton-Gore banner." .....
Navarro supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008. Navarro supported President Barack Obama's phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, the adoption of wind energy, and carbon taxes in order to stop global warming.
During the 2016 Presidential election, Navarro described himself as "a Reagan Democrat and a Trump Democrat abandoned by my party." Despite this, Navarro was critical of Ronald Reagan's defense spending, called GDP growth during the administration a "Failure of Reaganomics" and described the "10-5-3" tax proposal as "a very large corporate subsidy."
During the early stage of the Trump administration, Navarro was still known to be a Democrat, but by February 2018 he had again re-registered as a Republican.
Trump campaign advisor
In 2016, Navarro served as an economic policy adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He advocated for an isolationist and protectionist American foreign policy. Navarro and the international private equity investor Wilbur Ross authored an economic plan for the Trump campaign in September 2016. Navarro was invited to be an advisor after Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner saw on Amazon that he co-wrote Death by China. When told that the Tax Policy Center assessment of Trump's economic plan said it would reduce federal revenues by $6 trillion and reduce economic growth in the long term, Navarro said that the analysis demonstrated "a high degree of analytical and political malfeasance". When the Peterson Institute for International Affairs estimated that Trump's economic plan would cost millions of Americans their jobs, Navarro said that writers at the Peterson Institute "weave a false narrative and they come up with some phony numbers." According to MIT economist Simon Johnson, the economic plan essay authored by Navarro and Ross for Trump during the campaign had projections "based on assumptions so unrealistic that they seem to have come from a different planet. If the United States really did adopt Trump's plan, the result would be an immediate and unmitigated disaster." When 370 economists, including 19 Nobel laureates, signed a letter warning against Trump's stated economic policies in November 2016, Navarro said that the letter was "an embarrassment to the corporate offshoring wing of the economist profession who continues to insist bad trade deals are good for America."
In October 2016, along with Wilbur Ross and Andy Puzder, Navarro co-authored an essay titled "Economic Analysis of Donald Trump's Contract with the American Voter".
Trump administration
White House trade advisor
On December 21, 2016, Navarro was selected by President-elect Trump to head a newly created position, as director of the White House National Trade Council.
In the Trump administration, Navarro was a hawkish advisor on trade, as he encouraged Trump to implement trade protectionist policies. In explaining his role in the Trump administration, Navarro said that he is there to "provide the underlying analytics that confirm [Trump's] intuition [on trade]. And his intuition is always right in these matters." In 2018, as the Trump administration was implementing trade restrictionist policies, Navarro argued that no countries would retaliate against U.S. tariffs "for the simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world"; shortly after the implementation of the tariffs, other countries did implement retaliatory tariffs against the United States, leading to trade wars.
During his final year in the Trump administration, Navarro was involved in the administration's COVID-19 response. 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 touted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment of COVID-19 and condemned various public health measures to stop the spread of the virus.
Attempts to overturn the 2020 election
Navarro actively sought to subvert the election outcome and keep Trump in power.
Two weeks before the 2020 presidential elections, Navarro's office in the White House began preparing allegations of election fraud. After Joe Biden won, Trump refused to concede.
In December 2020, Navarro published a report alleging widespread election fraud. The report repeated discredited conspiracy theories claiming election fraud, including allegations that had been dismissed by the courts and Trump's own election security task force. In the report, Navarro cited many biased and unreliable sources of information, such as One America News Network, Newsmax, Bannon's podcast War Room: Pandemic, Just the News, and the National Pulse, because they provided what he termed "alternative coverage".
Arrests
Contempt of Congress conviction
On February 9, 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack subpoenaed Navarro to provide documents and testimony. He refused to do so and ignored both subpoenas. He made media appearances to defend this behavior in the press. He claimed that former President Trump was asserting executive privilege on his behalf, so he was exempt from the subpoenas—although in fact the active President, Joe Biden, had possessed sole discretion to assert executive privilege since the end of the Trump Administration, and had not done so on Navarro's behalf. Moreover, despite Navarro's claims in the news media, he did not identify any supporting evidence that Trump had even attempted to assert the privilege on his behalf. Ultimately, Navarro ignored all requirements of both subpoenas without effectively asserting any legally cognizable privilege or exemption. On April 6, 2022, the House of Representatives voted to hold Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for their refusals to testify before the House Select Committee on the basis of executive privilege claims. In May 2022, Navarro said he had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury and ordered to surrender any documents he had related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Navarro unsuccessfully sought to block both the House committee's subpoena and the grand jury subpoena.
On June 2, 2022, a grand jury impaneled in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia indicted Navarro on two counts of contempt of Congress. Count 1 of the indictment alleged Navarro refused to comply with a subpoena to produce documents; Count 2 alleged refusal to comply with a subpoena for testimony. Under the applicable law (2 U.S.C. § 192) each count is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year imprisonment. Navarro was arrested by deputy U.S. marshals at Reagan National Airport as he was about to board a plane to Nashville. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on July 15, 2022, signaled that he agreed that the treatment of Navarro at the outset of the criminal case was "unreasonably harsh," noting that the government did not offer self-surrender to Navarro.
Navarro claimed that Trump had privately asked him to invoke "executive privilege" over the documents sought by the congressional subpoena. In January 2023, Judge Mehta denied Navarro's effort to dismiss the charges against him, writing, "Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege. And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt." Mehta noted that Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino (two other Trump advisors whom the House committee had also sought to prosecute for contempt) had produced letters from Trump, in which the ex-president directed them to assert executive privilege on his behalf. DOJ chose not to prosecute Meadows and Scavino, and Mehta cited Navarro's failure to produce any similar letter from Trump. Mehta also rejected Navarro's bid to argue that the congressional subpoena was procedurally invalid. In a pretrial hearing in August 2023, Navarro claimed that Trump had told him in a February 2022 phone call not to testify to the House committee, but failed to produce any evidence of what Trump actually said in the conversation. Trump had already said he would not testify at Navarro's trial. Two days later, Judge Mehta ruled that Navarro could not claim an "executive privilege" not to testify before the House committee. After the ruling against him, Navarro tried—and failed—to grab a demonstrator's "Trump lost" sign from her at a press conference outside the courthouse.
On September 5, 2023, a jury was seated. Three former congressional committee staffers testified as prosecution witnesses; Navarro declined to testify in his own defense or to offer any witnesses for the defense. Navarro's criminal defense lawyer was Stanley Woodward Jr. After a two-day trial, Navarro was convicted on both counts of contempt of Congress; the jury rejected Navarro's argument that he had not willfully refused to comply with the subpoena. Navarro was the second ex-Trump aide to be convicted of contempt of Congress; Bannon had been convicted of the same offense the preceding year. On January 16, 2024, a federal judge denied Navarro's request for a new trial. On January 25, Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $9,500.
He filed an appeal. Judge Mehta and the appeals court denied his request to stay out of prison during the appeal. In court papers on March 10, Navarro's lawyer said his client was ordered to report to a Miami federal prison by March 19. Navarro then appealed to the Supreme Court to stay the order. On March 18, 2024, Chief Justice John Roberts rejected the appeal in a single-paragraph order, agreeing with the Circuit Court of Appeals order, meaning that Navarro was required to report to a minimum-security federal prison in Florida by 2 p.m. ET the following day. Navarro did so after engaging the services of white collar federal prison consultant Sam Mangel to prepare for his time in prison.
In May 2024, Navarro asked Mehta to allow him to spend the final 30 days of his sentence on supervised release rather than in prison. Mehta denied this request.
Refusal to produce presidential records to National Archives
In August 2022, the Department of Justice sued Navarro in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to compel him to produce official business-related emails from a personal ProtonMail account that he used to conduct White House business. After Trump left office in January 2021, Navarro refused requests from the National Archives to return the records, demanding immunity before he would release the emails. Navarro acknowledged that he had kept between 200 and 250 records that belonged to the government, but claimed that there was no legal means to require him to return the records to the National Archives, and that producing the emails would infringe his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
In March 2023, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered Navarro to promptly turn over the records, ruling that Navarro had a "plain" duty to turn over the records to NARA under the Presidential Records Act, which requires government business-related messages on personal accounts to be forwarded to official accounts within 20 business days.
Navarro appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In April 2023, the D.C. Circuit unanimously denied Navarro's request for a stay of the district court's order, writing: "There is no public interest in Navarro's retention of the records, and Congress has recognized that the public has an interest in the Nation's possession and retention of Presidential records."
After the appeals court denied Navarro's stay request, Judge Kollar-Kotelly ordered Navarro to turn over the 200 to 250 records and to conduct searches for additional presidential records. In February 2024, Kollar-Kotelly said she would appoint a magistrate judge and consider holding Navarro in contempt to ensure his compliance.
Views on trade
Navarro has been a staunch critic of trade with China and strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits. He has attacked Germany, Japan and China for their currency manipulation. He has called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, setting high tariffs, and repatriating global supply chains. He was a fierce opponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Personal life
In 2001 Navarro married Leslie Lebon, a California architect. The couple lived in Laguna Beach with Lebon's son from a previous marriage while Navarro was a professor at UC Irvine. In late 2018, Lebon filed for divorce in Orange County. Their divorce became final in December 2020.
