- 'Brutal, amoral, ruthless, cheating': how Trump's new trade tsar sees China
- Peter Navarro has been picked by to lead US trade and industrial policy
By Tom Phillips in Beijing
An image from Professor Peter Navarro’s 2012 documentary Death by China.
The Chinese government is a despicable, parasitic, brutal, brass-knuckled, crass, callous, amoral, ruthless and totally totalitarian imperialist power that reigns over the world’s leading cancer factory, its most prolific propaganda mill and the biggest police state and prison on the face of the earth.
That is the view of UCI professor Peter Navarro, the man chosen by Donald Trump to lead a new presidential office for US trade and industrial policy.
China’s rulers initially appeared to embrace the possibility that improved ties with Washington could be negotiated with the deal-making US president-elect.
“We must welcome him,” said one prominent foreign policy expert.
But that enthusiasm has dimmed after President Trump angered Beijing with a succession of interventions on sensitive issues including Taiwan and the South China Sea.
The appointment of Navarro, a University of California, Irvine business professor, to run the White House’s newly created national trade council, represents a further blow to those delusions.
Trump’s team described the 67-year-old academic as “a brilliant policy mind and a tireless worker”.
But that enthusiasm has dimmed after President Trump angered Beijing with a succession of interventions on sensitive issues including Taiwan and the South China Sea.
The appointment of Navarro, a University of California, Irvine business professor, to run the White House’s newly created national trade council, represents a further blow to those delusions.
Trump’s team described the 67-year-old academic as “a brilliant policy mind and a tireless worker”.
Peter Navarro, professor of economics and public policy in UCI's Paul Merage School of Business, will lead president-elect Donald Trump's newly created trade council.
But Beijing is unlikely to second such emotions.
Navarro has penned a number of anti-China tomes including Death by China and Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World.
In The Coming China Wars – a 2006 book that Trump has called one of his favourite on China – Navarro portrays the Asian country as a nightmarish realm where “the raw stench of a gut-wrenching, sweat-stained fear” hangs in the air and myopic, venal and incompetent Communist party officials rule the roost.
The Harvard-educated professor accuses “cheating China” of destroying both American factories and lives by flooding the US with illegally subsidised and “contaminated, defective and cancerous” exports.
American politicians must “aggressively and comprehensively address the China problem” before it leads to full-blown conflict, Navarro writes.
In a 2012 Netflix documentary based on Death by China, which Trump has described as “right on”, Navarro blames Beijing for the loss of 57,000 American factories and 25m jobs.
“The repressive communist government [is] now victimising both American and Chinese citizens alike,” the film claims.
“Help defend America and protect your family: don’t buy made in China,” Navarro tells viewers in an introduction to the 80-minute polemic, which is narrated by Martin Sheen.
Navarro, who has also dubbed China a “global pollution factory” and “disease incubator”, made no secret of his distaste for its rulers during Trump’s election campaign.
Navarro has penned a number of anti-China tomes including Death by China and Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World.
In The Coming China Wars – a 2006 book that Trump has called one of his favourite on China – Navarro portrays the Asian country as a nightmarish realm where “the raw stench of a gut-wrenching, sweat-stained fear” hangs in the air and myopic, venal and incompetent Communist party officials rule the roost.
The Harvard-educated professor accuses “cheating China” of destroying both American factories and lives by flooding the US with illegally subsidised and “contaminated, defective and cancerous” exports.
American politicians must “aggressively and comprehensively address the China problem” before it leads to full-blown conflict, Navarro writes.
In a 2012 Netflix documentary based on Death by China, which Trump has described as “right on”, Navarro blames Beijing for the loss of 57,000 American factories and 25m jobs.
“The repressive communist government [is] now victimising both American and Chinese citizens alike,” the film claims.
“Help defend America and protect your family: don’t buy made in China,” Navarro tells viewers in an introduction to the 80-minute polemic, which is narrated by Martin Sheen.
Navarro, who has also dubbed China a “global pollution factory” and “disease incubator”, made no secret of his distaste for its rulers during Trump’s election campaign.
An image from Professor Peter Navarro’s 2012 documentary Death by China.
Speaking to the Guardian in July at a resort near his home in Laguna Beach the academic railed against how China’s “brutal, authoritarian communist government” had decimated the US economy.
He painted China as a ravenous bully and said he agreed with Trump’s claim that Beijing was guilty of “raping our country” over trade.
“It’s an apt description of the damage and carnage that China’s trade policies have wrought on the American economic heartland. What’s happening is rapacious,” Navarro said.
He painted China as a ravenous bully and said he agreed with Trump’s claim that Beijing was guilty of “raping our country” over trade.
“It’s an apt description of the damage and carnage that China’s trade policies have wrought on the American economic heartland. What’s happening is rapacious,” Navarro said.
Andrew Nathan, a pro-China expert at Columbia University, said he believed Beijing would still be banking on its ability to win over the tycoon.
“I think predominantly they understand Trump as a businessman – and that for them is a glimmer of hope,” he said.
Li Yonghui, the head of the school of international relations at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said Navarro’s rise was consistent with Trump’s realist thoughts on China and would leave Beijing “a little worried” .
“We should stay vigilant. We have to be prepared,” the academic said.
“Trump will certainly place unprecedented pressure on China.”
Peter Navarro, a professor of economics in the University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business, was selected Wednesday, Dec. 21, by president-elect Donald Trump to oversee a newly created White House National Trade Council.
Described by many as a “China hawk,” Navarro wrote Death by China: How America Lost its Manufacturing Base, and produced an accompanying documentary that argued for an aggressive stance against unfair trade practices such as currency manipulation, exploitation of workers, and intellectual property law violation.
Trump made trade a key issue in his campaign and decried what he said was a history of bad deals for the U.S.
“I read one of Peter’s books on America’s trade problems years ago and was impressed by the clarity of his arguments and thoroughness of his research,” Trump said in a statement.
“He has presciently documented the harms inflicted by globalism on American workers, and laid out a path forward to restore our middle class.”
Navarro, 67, earned his doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1986 and has taught economics and public policy at UCI since 1989.
He has been an innovator online education.
“Peter Navarro does a good job designing courses and is one of our most productive professors in that area,” said Gary Matkin, dean of continuing education.
“At the end of last school year he had three MOOCs that had a total of 195,590 enrolled and about 150,000 of those classified as ‘active learners.’ ”
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