Trump’s China Hawk Is Trying to Commandeer the Coronavirus Stimulus and Others in the White House Are Alarmed
A draft executive order obtained by The Daily Beast shows that Navarro has his sights on a massive disruption of the medical-supply chain to make it more America-centric.
Erin Banco National Security Reporter
Asawin Suebsaeng White House Reporter
Updated Mar. 19, 2020 9:41AM ET
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has seized on negotiations over how to handle the economic fallout of the coronavirus to push President Trump to use the crisis to bolster his “Buy American” agenda—starting with domestic production of key medical goods and equipment.
His role, as described to The Daily Beast by several officials, has been aggressive enough to prompt serious pushback from other senior Trump officials, who are worried that Trump will be won over by the Buy American pitch, which will, in turn, have damaging consequences during the nation’s worst public-health and economic crises in years.
The order being pushed by Navarro, a draft of which was obtained by The Daily Beast, lays out a slew of policies that would ultimately curb the importing of foreign goods and create conditions that would allow for the increased production of American medicines, raw materials, and vaccines. The order is similar in language and tone to Trump’s April 2017 executive order “Buy American Hire American.”
In an interagency meeting last week, representatives from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other trade officials voiced their objections to Navarro, saying the executive order could create more harm than good by restricting the flow of medicines and other supplies needed to treat coronavirus patients, according to two individuals familiar with the conversation, including one with direct knowledge.
Navarro is an infamous China hawk who has long appealed to Trump’s America-first instinct on trade policy. And according to two administration officials, he has been working on drafting his order with the president’s explicit sign-off, having personally pitched the idea to the president in recent weeks, according to two administration officials.
“The president warmly received it and told Peter to get to work on it,” said one of these officials—who stressed that they were not on Navarro’s side in this policy fight. “[Navarro] is not freelancing this... This is something the president [repeatedly] said he wanted done.”
That Navarro has found himself playing an integral role in response to a massive global pandemic illustrates the degree to which economic concerns have guided the president’s response to the crisis. But there is hardly uniformity within the administration about what constitutes the right approach.
Other high-ranking Trump lieutenants, such as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and the president’s top White House economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, have also voiced internal opposition to Navarro’s plan, arguing that if Trump were to do this during a pandemic and economic crisis, it could risk making problems worse, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.
Navarro’s initiative has also run into expected objections from industry executives, as well as Republican veterans of past administrations. Tony Fratto, a White House and Treasury official during the George W. Bush presidency, knocked the proposed policy as “a mistake,” posting to Twitter that “pandemics are global” and that “we need greater cooperation, not keeping critical supplies in walled gardens.”
White House spokespeople, Kudlow, and Navarro did not respond to requests for comment by press time Wednesday. The departments of State and Treasury and the FDA did not provide comment either.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/peter-navarro-trumps-china-hawk-is-trying-to-commandeer-the-coronavirus-stimulus?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
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