The "Expert" Who Persuaded Trump On Tarrifs

"MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow walked her viewers on Friday through the origin story of how President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, joined the MAGA team during his first presidential run – and brought a phantom source with him to Washington, D.C.

"'You’d think it would take like a grand plan and some big brains to figure out how to destroy the economy of the richest nation on Earth, but that's not how it's working out,' the primetime host told viewers during her show’s opening monologue. 'Turns out, it doesn't take a big idea or a lot of big brains working together.'

"Maddow noted that Trump tasked son-in-law Jared Kushner with finding him an economic adviser, a search that led Kushner to Amazon, where he landed on one of Navarro’s books. That’s when Maddow noted that Trump tasked son-in-law Jared Kushner with finding him an economic adviser, a search that led Kushner to Amazon, where he landed on one of Navarro’s books. That’s when things took a turn for Maddow, who said Friday that Navarro wasn’t the only figure who helped craft Trump’s tariff policy.

“In all of his books, Peter Navarro has cited an economics expert to justify his views, and the economics expert he cites is somebody named Ron Vara, who, Maddow added, sent out a memo around Washington at the start of Trump’s first administration touting the benefits of a tariff policy.

“'The problem is, Ron Vara doesn't exist, he never has,' Maddow said. 'The economics expert that Peter Navarro has long cited to explain why he's so gung-ho on tariffs, this person, Ron Vara, is a made-up person. He is a fictional person. Peter Navarro invented Ron Vara as his expert source, so he could quote this expert source over and over and over again in his crackpot books.'”

(link)

Robert Reich and Heather Cox Richardson Chime In On The Trump/MAGA Abomination

 "Whether it’s universities, law firms, or entire countries, here are 10 basic rules for hitting back"

Friends,

On Tuesday, the Trump regime targeted Harvard University, threatening to withdraw about $9 billion in contracts and multiyear grants unless Harvard capitulates to unspecified demands.

Last week, Trump targeted major Washington law firms, threatening to cut off their access to government buildings and government contracts unless they capitulated to various demands.

Yesterday, the regime placed 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and “reciprocal” tariffs on imports from all other nations. Some governments say they’ll retaliate. Others — Israel and Vietnam, for example — are responding by rolling back their own tariffs. Trump says he’ll continue to raise tariffs until other countries capitulate to various unspecified demands.

What do all these have in common? Trump’s unquenchable thirst for power, dominance, and intimidation.

Here are 10 rules for dealing with this.

1. Stop treating Trump’s excuses as his real concerns. He says, for example, that he’s motivated by antisemitism at various universities. He isn’t. He and his goons have attacked other universities for entirely different reasons — allowing transgender women to play in women’s sports, or maintaining programs that encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion. They’ll use whatever pretext they can find to issue demands and get universities to capitulate.

2. For the same reason, stop assuming that Trump is concerned about other nations’ “unfair” trade practices or illegal immigration. These, too, are pretexts. He is using tariffs, immigration, and every tool at his command to intimidate other nations, including our Canadian and Mexican allies and traditional allies in Europe, in order to get them to capitulate to various demands.

3. Trump’s major interest is capitulation itself. Surrender is the whole point. He and those under him who are managing these extortionate initiatives want headlines that say “they” have surrendered to him — whether “they” is a country, a major university, a large law firm, a big nonprofit, even a Democratic state like California. Surrender is the point. Domination is his goal. (It always has been.)

4. Each surrender feeds the public impression that Trump wants fed — that he is all-powerful, invincible, and able to get every person, institution, and country to cower to him. He knows intuitively that each capitulation feeds his power — because power is itself an impression; invincibility, the consequence of everyone’s capitulation.

5. Each capitulation encourages him and his goons to engage in even more bullying of more institutions and countries. Trump’s need for dominance is insatiable. Every time he succeeds in gaining capitulation, he and his goons look for other opportunities to enlarge the impression that he has boundless power.

6. Most of these institutions and countries will cave to Trump because their leaders are mainly concerned about their own institution’s or country’s survival. They are not concerned about the effects of their capitulations on other institutions or on the world as a whole. The costs of significant losses of funding, clients, or access are borne by them; the benefits of resistance are felt by all.

7. It’s vitally important, therefore, that institutions and countries join together to fight this systemic intimidation.

8. University faculties must join together under the umbrella of the American Association of University Professors to speak out against Trump’s assault on free speech and debate at universities, sue the Trump administration for violating their rights under the First Amendment, and develop a media strategy to alert the public to the dangers.

9. Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the European Union must join together to create a special trade zone that excludes the United States. They should threaten to limit American banks’ access to their public procurement markets, limit the huge sums their citizens invest in American companies annually, and increase tax and regulatory pressure on American digital platforms.

10. The media must not fan the flames of Trump’s madness. They should celebrate institutions that are standing up to Trump (such as the Jenner & Block law firm, Canada, and Mexico) and condemn those that are surrendering to him (such as Columbia University, the Paul Weiss law firm, and Israel and Vietnam on tariffs). They should help educate Americans about the costs of capitulating to Trump and its baleful consequences. This is all about power, and Trump’s thirst for power is all about converting the United States into a dictatorship.

Robert Reich

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Heather Cox Richardson also chimes in. 

DEFCON 3

4/2/2025: On this date, Donald J Trump enacted the worst tariffs since the 1930s, which were a significant factor in the Great Depression. Combine that with all that DOGE is doing, there is no doubt in this blogger's mind that we are in the worst existential crisis since the Civil War:

Tariffs, Populism, And Economic Nationalism

"Skeptoid's wheelhouse is science vs. pseudoscience, so some of you might be asking why are we talking about an issue of political policy? We're not. We're talking about a question rooted in science: economics. Economics is very much a science, though there's always debate on whether it's a hard science or a soft science. It's generally considered a soft science, because it studies human behavior and societal interactions, which are harder to quantify and control compared to, for example, chemistry. Some argue that economics should still be considered a hard science due to its heavy dependence on mathematics, including calculus, statistics, probability, game theory, differential equations, and so on. However, these remain difficult to apply; you can mathematically develop all the predictive theories you want, but they're really hard to test by observing human behavior. And so today we are going to look at some hard examples of economic nationalism having been tried in three famous recent cases. Was it a bounty for their economies, or a bust?"

Click on the link below for the details:

Economic Nationalism: Bounty or Bust?

Tariffs: What You Rely On If You Are Economically Ignorant

"Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elevating McKinley, representative from Ohio from 1877 to 1891 and president from 1897 to 1901, to justify his plan to impose new high tariffs.

"Trump’s call for tariffs is not an economic plan; it is a worldview. Trump claims that foreign countries pay tariff duties and thus putting new tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will bring enough foreign money into the country to fund things like childcare, end federal budget deficits, and pay for the tax cuts he wants to give to the wealthy and corporations.

"This is a deliberate lie. Tariffs are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid not by foreign countries but by American consumers. Economists warn that Trump’s tariff plan would cost a typical family an average of more than $2,600 a year, with poorer families hardest hit; spike inflation as high as 20%; result in 50,000 to 70,000 fewer jobs created each month; slow economic growth; and add about $5.8 trillion in deficits over ten years. It would tank an economy that under the Biden administration, which has used tariffs selectively to protect new industries and stop unfair trade practices, has boomed."

Click on this link for more.

Will Trump Lead The World Into Another Great Depression?

If you think this question is too far out, ponder that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of the early 1930s had a devastating effect on the world economy.

How Donald Trump’s Trade Wars Could Lead to a Great Depression

 

 (PBS)