United States President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that Peter Navarro, a former trade advisor who served a jail sentence in relation to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, will join his new administration as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing.
Announcing the appointment on social media, Trump praised Navarro’s “broad range of White House experience” and “extensive policy analytic and media skills.”
He said that Navarro’s mission in the new role “will be to help successfully advance and communicate the Trump Manufacturing, Tariff and Trade Agendas.”
Why did Navarro serve jail time?
Navarro, 75, was sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from a House committee probing the January 6 attack by Trump supporters, a conviction he described as “partisan weaponization of the judicial system.”
Immediately after his release in July, Navarro told the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee: “I went to prison so you won’t have to. The committee demanded that I betray Donald J. Trump to save my own skin. I refused.”
What is Navarro’s stance on China?
Navarro, a former economics and public policy professor at the University of California, has a reputation as a hawkish critic of trade arrangements with China.
As director of the White House National Trade Council during Trump’s first term from 2017-2021, he fiercely defended tariffs on $370 billion worth of Chinese imports and advocated for national security tariffs on aluminium and steel.
“During my first term, few were more effective or tenacious than Peter in enforcing my two sacred rules, Buy American, Hire American,” Trump said, praising Navarro for “moving every one of my Tariff and Trade actions FAST.”
Navarro’s Canada controversy
But Navarro’s fiery language also upset US 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 in the back on the way out the door.”
Ottawa was outraged, and Navarro later apologized.
Trump’s second administration taking shape
Navarro’s appointment came amid a flurry of announcements on Wednesday as Trump’s second administration begins to take shape.
Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick is set to be Commerce Secretary with overall lead on trade, joining Jamieson Greer, another veteran of the 2018-2020 US-China trade war appointed last week.
Trump said he wanted Paul Atkins, a financial industry veteran and an advocate for cryptocurrency, to serve as the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Atkins “recognizes that digital assets and other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump’s preferred choice for Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, however, is facing allegations of sexual misconduct, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement, leading Trump to consider other options.
mf/kb (AP, Reuters)
