Here’s a letter to the New York Times.
Editor:
Encountering, in David Leonhardt’s report, a summary of Peter Navarro’s attempted justifications of Trump’s tariffs makes the head spin (“A Disagreement on Tariffs,” February 18). Navarro’s arguments are so illogical, self-contradictory, and economically ignorant that they’d be merely laughable were he not an advisor to the President of the United States.
For example, Mr. Leonhardt writes that “Navarro argues that the U.S. is such an important market that foreign companies will cut their prices and accept lower profits rather than pass along the cost of tariffs to consumers. He also predicts that suppliers, such as those that sell parts to automakers, will relocate to the U.S.”
Where to begin? Tariffs that don’t cause American buyers to pay higher prices protect no jobs in import-competing industries. Therefore, if the goal of trade policy is to stop foreigners’ alleged ‘stealing’ of American jobs – and if Navarro is correct that U.S. tariffs are completely absorbed by foreign suppliers – then the tariffs about which Navarro boasts are utterly ineffective at promoting that goal.
It gets worse. Navarro has long complained that foreign suppliers charge “unfairly low prices” – that foreigners ‘dump’ too many goods into the American market. Yet now he tells us that Trump’s tariffs are a genius tool for pushing the prices charged by foreign suppliers even lower. If – contrary to fact, but consistent with Navarro’s long-time position – “unfairly low prices” of imports hurt Americans, why is Navarro bragging that Trump is muscling foreign suppliers to cut their prices even further?
Finally, Navarro – like his boss – incessantly warns of U.S. trade deficits. Yet now he crows that Trump’s tariffs will incite foreign suppliers to set up shop in the U.S., seemingly ignorant of the fact that all such moves by foreign suppliers increase the U.S. trade deficit.
In 2017 Ryan Bourne described “the spectacular economic ignorance of Peter Navarro.” In 2025 that ignorance, if anything, has grown even more spectacular.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
