Team,
This episode of The Evening Edit on Fox Business hits the heart of the economic fight we’re waging right now — inflation, affordability, food prices, the border shock to rents, and President Trump’s sector-by-sector strategy to bring relief. Liz MacDonald and I dig into the new executive order exempting more than a hundred food and grocery items from reciprocal tariffs, why it makes economic sense, and how it fits into the broader push to knock down Biden’s legacy inflation.
We also get into beef versus chicken inflation (and why biology matters), the real rent impact of Biden’s open border, and the warning signs inside the fourth-quarter GDP outlook. This isn’t sugar-coated messaging — it’s a straight explanation of what’s driving prices and what President Trump is doing to bring them down.
Watch the full interview in video or read the transcript below. Share it with anyone who still wonders why Americans feel squeezed.
Peter
The Evening Edit (FBN) – Senior Counselor Peter Navarro Interview
ELIZABETH MACDONALD: Joining us now, senior counselor to President Trump for a trade in manufacturing. Peter Navarro. Peter, always a pleasure. It’s wonderful and great to see you again. Sir, can you talk about,
COUNSELOR PETER NAVARRO: Be back with you, Liz, to It’s been too long.
ELIZABETH MACDONALD: It’s been too long. It’s right. Can you tell us more about Trump’s new sweeping executive order exempting more than a hundred food and grocery items from his reciprocal tariffs? Because the media’s complaining about this saying, well, we thought he needed tariffs for national security.
COUNSELOR PETER NAVARRO:
Well, this one’s just common sense. If you go down the list, Liz, of all of those food stuffs that are on there, we don’t really provide or grow any of those to speak of. There’s a few on there like cattle we can talk about, but chocolate, we don’t grow GCA here. Coffee, no, that’s Brazil and everywhere else around the world. So it simply makes sense to exempt those based on what the economists called the competing elasticities, the supply and demand. It just makes sense. So we’re going to get that down. The cattle and the beef one. The beef one’s on there, and I think it illustrates the inflation fight that we’re really focused like a laser beam on right now. Legacy inflation, Biden legacy inflation. As your chart shows, Biden left us with an enormous amount of inflation across all the key sectors and what we’re fighting is sector by sector in the trenches.
If you take beef prices and you compare them to chicken prices, the problem we have with beef versus chicken is the lag involved 45 days from egg to supermarket for chickens. Brooke Rollins at the Department of Agriculture, president Trump, we just got that one out of the way and everything’s down on that. But cattle is like a one and a half to two year proposition from calf to supermarket and it’s complicated by things like drought. So in the short run we get that on the list. You mentioned what was interesting, Liz, you talked about 11 million illegal immigrants coming in under Biden. I mean, I think that’s low, but if you use the rule of thumb for every 1 million illegal aliens that drives up rent by 1%, that’s an 11% increase alone because of Biden’s open border. And interestingly enough, that’s a national average, but a lot of that’s concentrated in our sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago. Then you wonder why We get Marxist candidates.
ELIZABETH MACDONALD: Yeah, then they have urban inflation too there. The polls show the Americans are still upset about inflation. Let’s talk about the numbers. Cumulatively inflation was up 21.3% under Biden versus just about 3% of Trump so far this year. We’re not saying inflation is good, it’s bad, it’s hard. I mean, grocery prices were up nearly 24% under Biden versus 2.7% under Trump. So far he is only been in office eight months. Wage growth is outpacing the growth in inflation this year. There’s a 4.2% rise in wages versus 3% inflation or so. But what do you make of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank model, GDP now third quarter, GDP on target for 4% growth, then picking up again in the first and second quarters. Do you see that too?
COUNSELOR PETER NAVARRO: Well, let’s talk about the growth issue. I’m worried about this fourth quarter what the numbers are going to be. The SCHs shut down, likely shaved, a full point, a point and a half off our GDP growth rate, and that’s output that we’re not getting back. Yes, we’re having a rebound, but I don’t want the Federal Reserve to think that we don’t need rate cuts now in December because we do. They should be lower than they are and we’ve got to focus on that. So let’s see what happens now. But the inflation and affordability flight is key. We don’t want to be in the business of telling people that everything’s getting better when they’re still feeling the pain. We don’t do that, but we can explain sector by sector how help is on the way. I think part of what President Trump’s going to do tonight is part of that messaging effort to explain what we’re doing. If you look at healthcare, Liz, you can throw as much more money as the Democrats want to throw on it, and the problem is the only people who get that money are the middlemen, the prescription people, the insurers. So on. Thank you. So thanks for having me. It’s a good you to talk about this and let’s do this some more Great
ELIZABETH MACDONALD: Conversation. Peter Navarro, thank you so very much. It’s good to see you again now.
