The New Maga Deal
By Peter Navarro
Winning Team Publishing, 221 pages, $29.99
What will Donald Trump do if re-elected in November? Peter Navarro, a senior White House aide during the first Trump administration, offers “an unofficial guidebook” with contributions “from some of the leading policy experts that could influence President Donald Trump’s second term.” Navarro was the Trump team’s most enthusiastic advocate of high tariffs on imports from China, and reprises his views in his contributions to this slim collection.
The book’s publication on July 17 coincided with Navarro’s release from incarceration for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena about the Jan. 6 events. A blurb on the back cover from Donald Trump praises him for “protecting our economy against the assault from foreign countries all over the world,” adding: “Peter Navarro is a patriot who has been treated very badly, but he continues forward.”
Navarro’s central theme “is to completely decouple the US economy from China. There are no surprises in his recommendations. He proposes high tariffs on Chinese imports, a Buy American program for federal procurement, restrictions on Chinese asset holdings by federal pension funds, and “a ban on the importation of electronic devices,” including electric vehicles that might transmit data to China. Other proposals floated in the book include aggressive drilling for oil and gas, a renewed drive for nuclear power, space exploration, and treatment of “Chinese cyber hacks as acts of war.”