Who is behind Trump's tariffs: "The Hawks of the Middle Road" economist Navarro

His role as a driving force in dragging the global economy into a scuffle is indisputable, but whether the cost of this war is worth it is still unknown. (Synopsis: Foreign media revealed that Musk "privately lobbied Trump" to withdraw tariffs but failed, and the White House trade adviser: brain problems) (Background supplement: Trump "simply miscalculated" reciprocal tariffs! AEI scholars burst: tax rate irrigation 4 times, key parameters are not understood) The global financial market is being swept by a sudden cold snap. Panic in global capital markets peaked after the announcement of Trump's extreme policy of imposing "reciprocal tariffs" on almost all trading partners: On April 7, as of 10 p.m. ET, S&P 500 futures fell 5.98% and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 6.2%. Dow Jones futures fell 5.5%. Asian markets are even more risk-averse, with the Nikkei falling as much as 8.9% in early trading. Taiwan's weighted index plunged nearly 10% after a two-day holiday, with major stocks such as TSMC and Foxconn fusing off. The crypto market is not immune. Investors watch as assets shrink, and the red lines on crypto trading screens act like alarms, signaling an even bigger turmoil. According to CoinGlass, the liquidation of cryptocurrencies has soared to about $892 million, including more than $300 million in long and short Bitcoin positions. BTC has fallen to around $77,000, and ETH has reached $1,500. The clarion call of the trade war is sounding again, and on the cusp is Peter Navarro, Trump's senior trade adviser. On April 6, Navarro appeared in an interview with Fox News. Trying to calm investor sentiment, he played a ridiculous language art in the interview: "The first principle, especially for small investors, is that you don't lose money unless you sell your stock now. The smart strategy is not to panic and hold on." Floating loss is not a loss, not selling is equal to no loss. It's hard to imagine that this ineffective consolation of approaching the French style of spiritual triumph came from a senior trade adviser to the president and a university economics professor. This statement obviously did not calm the market's anxiety, but instead focused on him - the Harvard doctor, nicknamed "non-mainstream economist" by the outside world, seems to be not only a spokesman for policy, but also a driving force behind extreme trade protectionism. Even Musk, who has a good relationship with President Trump, publicly expressed criticism and irony of the presidential adviser on social media a few days ago, bluntly saying that "getting a doctorate in economics from Harvard is not a good thing, and it may lead to poor decision-making due to excessive conceit"; He also questioned that Navarro had never produced anything substantial with his own hands. Who is this economist standing behind Trump? How did he fuel this storm of tariff policy that swept the world? From the fringes of academia to the heart of decision-making in the White House, the intersection of Navarro's life and Trump's protectionist ideals may have contributed to the crisis. The story of Peter Navarro, a marginal figure from academia to politics, begins on July 15, 1959, in an ordinary family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Albert "Al" Navarro, was a saxophonist and clarinetist, and his mother, Evelyn Littlejohn, was a secretary on Saks Fifth Avenue. However, the family was brief and turbulent, and his parents divorced when he was 9 or 10 years old, leaving Navarro with his mother in Palm Beach, Florida, and Bethesda, Maryland. Growing up in a single-parent family may have planted a desire for stability and self-reliance in his heart, which eventually sprouted when he finished school at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Maryland. In 1972, on an academic scholarship, Navarro entered Tufts University, where he earned a bachelor's degree. That same year, he joined the U.S. Peace Corps and served in Thailand for three years. This experience introduced him to the complexities of the international community and may have paved the way for his future concern about global trade imbalances. He received his master's degree in public administration from Harvard University in 1979 and received his doctorate in 1986 under the tutelage of economist Richard E. Caves. With his degree in hand, he chose to stay in academia, working as a professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Irvine for decades from 1989 until becoming professor emeritus. However, Navarro is not a man who is content to be a bookkeeper, and he has thrown himself into politics five times, trying to put his ideas into practice. In 1992, he ran for mayor of San Diego, leading with 38.2% of the vote in the primary, but losing 48% in the runoff; Since then, he has run for seats on city councils, county boards of supervisors, and congresses, all of which have won 41.9 percent of the vote in the 1996 congressional elections, compared with 7.85 percent in the 2001 special election of the city council. These failures did not hold him back, but highlighted his persistent and marginal qualities. He repeatedly emphasized economic protectionism and jobs first during the campaign, echoing Trump's "America First" in the future, but failed to win the favor of voters at the time. From a teenager in a single-parent family, to a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard, to a defeated political fringe, Navarro's trajectory is full of contradictions. He appears to be both a rigorous scholar and a radical activist; It has left its footprints in academia and suffered setbacks in politics. In academic and political circles, trade protection and a tough attitude towards China seem to have sown the seeds long ago. From the moment Peter Navarro received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, he was not destined to be satisfied with the calm in the ivory tower. His subsequent trajectory shows that the new doctor has developed a keen interest in the global economic landscape. When he joined UC Irvine in 1989, he began to translate his academic enthusiasm into sharp criticism. His goal is to a rising power – China. What really stands out for him is a series of writings that promote the China threat. In 2006, he published "The Coming China Wars," warning in an almost prophetic tone that China's economic expansion was not just business competition but an existential threat to American manufacturing. The book reveals an almost biased stubbornness, such as "China's development is a threat to mankind and will bring more conflicts and instability to the world." At that time, readers' book reviews on Amazon mostly believed that the book was deliberately hyped and sensational. While the book did not resonate widely in mainstream economics, it sent ripples through some conservative circles. Five years later, 2011's Death by China brought Navarro's critique to a climax. This book is not only an academic analysis, but also an indictment. He aggressively accused China of systematically destroying the foundations of the U.S. economy through illegal export subsidies, production subsidies, currency manipulation and intellectual property theft. However, these views of Navarro are not without controversy. Mainstream economists, such as MIT's Simon Johnson, have publicly criticized his analysis as "too one-sided and ignores the complexity of global supply chains"; And Navarro's tough wording, in stark contrast to what is generally considered to be a refined academic image, has also led him to be labeled an "outlier" in the economics profession. However, Navarro used more than ten years of academic accumulation to build a set of ...