TRANSCRIPT
Finnerty (Newsmax) – Senior Trade Counselor Peter Navarro Interview
FINNERTY: Joining us now from more White House Senior Council for Trade and Manufacturing. Peter Navarro. Great to see you, Peter. Hey, Rob, I want to ask you about China and breaking up this China Russia alliance. The president with me Friday sort of hinted that we are not only on the verge of a deal, but maybe on the verge of a much larger breakthrough that goes beyond just trade with China.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Rob, there's just so many problems we have with China with respect to the unfair trade practices. It would be an amazing achievement to get through all of that. It's troublesome. That's an understatement to say the least, that India and China are both buying Russian oil. I mean, think about it, Rob. We've got India as the maharaja of tariffs, highest tariffs. They charge us of any major country. So they sell us a bunch of stuff. We can't sell 'em anything. They use the money that we give 'em to buy Russian oil, and then Russia uses the oil money to fund the war machine. And then the United States has to go and provide defense expenditure aid to Ukraine. So what's wrong with that picture? What is wrong with that picture? And the president, president Trump recognizes this chess board. China's implicated, India's implicated some other countries of the world and he has vowed to stop that crazy math and crack down on it. So there's just a lot of moving parts, Rob. But the good news is that we keep knocking down good trade deals, one after the other, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, European Union, which was the biggest to date. And with those deals, we're not only leveling the playing field, but we're actually creating big good deals and investment for the country. You take the Japanese deal, that's going to be amazing. Korea. It's like it's all good, but we got to keep pressing. And the president understands the connection between economic security, national security between war and peace...
FINNERTY: Well, let me just ask you the quick question just so we can get to other topics. Are we going to have a deal with China by next week?
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Well, let's let... up to the boss...
FINNERTY: I mean you know this stuff...
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: I managed to stay around Rob because I never get ahead of the boss. I'm only here to tell you what happens and how it happens and the analytics behind it.
FINNERTY: You know what I respect that about you, Peter. I was going through these questions with my producers this afternoon and I said, they were like, well, ask him if you think we're going to have a deal in one week with China, because that's the big one. And I said, he's going to tell me that he's not going to get ahead of the boss. And I anticipated that. I understand that. My number brother. Yeah, absolutely. No, no, it's not a bad thing. Alright, let me ask you about this 25% tariff on India today. Nikki Haley, who is a never Trumper, tweeted that India should not be buying oil from Russia, but China in adversary got a 90 day tariff pause. Don't give China a pass and burn a relationship with a strong ally like India. Is India really a strong ally? And are we giving China a pass?
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: So Nikki, let me do a little math for you. You're so stupid. We got 25% tariffs on India. Were given China a pass with 55% tariffs. Nikki. Double. Okay, more than double. If we're going to get precise about this, Nikki just stopped. You were the governor of South Carolina and all you did was welcome Chinese investment to come in and basically dominate your state. You created really low wage jobs. You brought the Chinese in. You greased that deal, Nick. So just shut up. Nobody cares about you anymore. That's that. Rob.
FINNERTY: I want to ask...
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Have I been clear about that.
FINNERTY: Nope, that was the answer. You were clear. I want to ask you about President Trump on Friday. He fired the head of the Bureau and labor statistics, a Biden appointee after that Friday jobs report, which was lower than expected. Can you explain to me how those numbers would be rigged? How would this woman go about doing that?
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Well, I can give you two historical examples. Back in 2018, during the first Trump term, when we were cruising along and look at good, the bureau labor statistics, according to the Federal Reserve, basically mess with the numbers that make us look worse than we actually were. So that happened, and there was this thing called the QuickPay scandal, where Obama messed around with the 2012 election by shifting some numbers. That's how it works. You go between quarters. The possibility here, beyond shear incompetence, and I think that's the bigger problem here, is that the biggest obstacle we're facing Rob right now with the Trump program is Jay Powell refusing to lower interest rates. Everything else is hitting on all cylinders. We got the big beautiful bill. We got the tariffs, the revenues, we got energy prices going down. We even got the long bind going down and all was good. So if you wanted to screw around with the numbers, you'd basically do what you did, which was make the economy seem like it was going too fast a couple of weeks and months ago, and then drop the hammer. I mean, if we had known then what we know today, if those numbers are accurate, Powell would have lowered interest rates by a hundred basis points already. Do you know what that means? That's billions and billions of jobs. It's over, excuse me, billions of billions of dollars off the debt and it's over a million jobs that we would've created.
FINNERTY: I think COVID messed it up as well. Peter Navarro, good to see you.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Well, that's when things went wrong, they keep going wrong, Rob.
FINNERTY: It feels like that. But a lot of things are going well.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Incompetence. And these should not be rewarded. And Donald Trump does not reward incompetence. You are fired. I think he said that.
FINNERTY: Alright, good to see you, Peter Navarro. Thank you. We appreciate it.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Alright, my brother. Alright, take care.
