How Peter Navarro, Trump’s Tariff Cheerleader, Became the Ultimate Yes-Man

This expression is at the heart of the free trade lexicon. Free trade in goods or services, free of tariffs or other barriers, is likely to lead to higher total output than if there had been no trade. Specialization makes economic sense: not all countries should grow their own peppers. (Years ago, Navarro described this as “one of the deepest truths in all of economics.” He now refers to the “so-called gains from trade.”)

At Cambridge, Navarro needed to write a thesis on the economics of corporate charitable giving. Dubin had to pay his rent. (“I was a poor student and he was renovating a triplex on Central Square.”) Money changed hands. “He told me the direction he wanted to go and I helped him get there, theoretically and empirically,” Dubin said. “I might have used his data to put some models together and get him going. And then he took over at some point and it became his.” Dubin, speaking only half seriously, described it as “one of my first counseling experiences.” He observed that “most people, at that level, wouldn’t pay someone else to help them.” But Navarro saw nothing inappropriate in the exchange, and neither did Dubin.

The two men become close friends. “We went to the Cape together,” Dubin said. “We went on a double date.” They also co-authored several articles. Dubin recalls that Navarro, who was “very health and body conscious,” was an enthusiast of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a sticky, unregulated byproduct of the paper industry that is believed to ease muscle tension. According to Dubin, Navarro was not immune to the substance’s notorious side effects: “He smelled like garlic from it.” (Navarro told me that today he doesn’t “drink, smoke weed, do hard drugs or even prescription drugs,” adding, “It’s just not my thing. Live clean or die.”)

Navarro’s thesis, submitted in 1986, does not acknowledge Dubin’s contributions. According to all the economists I interviewed, this omission constitutes an academic violation. Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, told me that if someone “actually develops their models for themselves, I think that’s crossing a boundary.” Holzer, who served as chief economist at the Department of Labor during the Clinton administration, is a former acquaintance of Navarro at Harvard. “At a minimum, a footnote acknowledging an individual’s contribution is appropriate,” Holzer said.

Lawrence Goulder, the only surviving member of Navarro’s dissertation committee, agrees. If Navarro had received substantial help, he told me, then some recognition of that help would have been “expected” and its absence was “inappropriate.” (Goulder, who is now at Stanford, noted that at Harvard, Navarro taught him how to windsurf.)

Navarro, when asked if he engaged in academic deception, said of Dubin: “I don’t recall him giving me any substantial help on my dissertation.” Navarro also highlighted other posts in which he thanked Dubin for his help.

Later in his life, Peter Navarro introduced readers of his books to a friend named Ron Vara. According to “If It Rains in Brazil, Buy Starbucks,” a 2001 financial advice book that urged retail investors to pay attention to world events, Vara had been captain of a reserve unit at the time of the Gulf War. He now lived on a houseboat in Miami and was known as the Black Prince of Disaster, for his “macroplays” – trades skillfully taking advantage of sudden appearances of human misery. Vara had macroplayed Hurricane Andrew and an earthquake in Taiwan. In 1986, when Vara was a “struggling economics doctoral student at Harvard,” he had apparently been prescient: two days before the Chernobyl disaster, he had shorted companies invested in nuclear energy.

Vara appears in several other Navarro books, including “Death by China,” where he is quoted as saying, “Only the Chinese can turn a leather couch into an acid bath, a crib into a deadly weapon, and a cell phone battery into piercing shrapnel.” » Vara was also credited as executive producer (and musical director) of the videos Navarro showed to his Rising China class at UC Irvine.