China Hawk Navarro Has Trump's Ear

Washington, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Mar, 2018 ) :President Donald Trump's increasingly tough measures on trade, including Thursday's latest crackdown on China, demonstrate the rising influence of Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist who has long railed against the threat from Beijing.

Trump announced tariffs on as much as $60 billion in Chinese imports to retaliate against the alleged theft of American intellectual property. The move comes just two weeks after the White House slapped steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, actions also aimed at China which were crafted under Navarro's watch.

He has advised Trump since his upstart presidential campaign, when candidate Trump vowed to crack down on unfair trade practices he argued have destroyed American jobs and left once-mighty US cities a shadow of their former selves.

Navarro's works include the documentary film, "Death by China: how America lost its manufacturing base," connected to his 2011 book showing China as a serial trade cheater, subsidizing export-oriented industries and manipulating its Currency.

The consequences, including a harsh deindustrialization of the United States, demand a tough response to China, or the "Dragon," Navarro argued. "Unless all of us rise up together to confront the Dragon, the rest of our lives and the lives of our children will be far less prosperous -- and far more dangerous -- than the Golden Age in which many of us grew up," he wrote in the book's first chapter.