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Miami Herald
20-04-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Peter Navarro's net worth: From academic to Trump's trade policy adviser
Peter Navarro went from a relatively obscure professor of economics at a state business school to getting his big break as a trade adviser to President Trump in 2017. Now, as a senior trade adviser to Trump in the second administration, he's played a key role in drafting trade policies for the 47th president, despite having no real-life experience in exporting or importing goods. Here's how much Navarro is worth and how his life catapulted from a career in academia to the White House. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free dailyNavarro likely has a net worth of a few million dollars. In 2021, he sold a Laguna Beach home for almost $3 million, according to The Orange County Register. He will have received royalties from the many books he's authored. His 2017 financial disclosure to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics obtained by Politico showed that he held rental properties in Troy, New York but also had mortgages on them. Fortune magazine put Navarro's net worth at more than $1 million in 2017. Related: Donald Trump's net worth amid tariff hullabaloo Navarro is probably paid about $200,000 or more. Glassdoor, which provides job listings and compiles salaries, listed the average annual salary of a senior adviser to the president at $203,150, and estimated top pay at $280,534. In 2017, Navarro's salary as a professor was $240,000. Peter Navarro was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 15, 1949. He grew up in Florida and Maryland, and he was raised by his mother, a secretary, after her divorce from his father, a musician, according to Time magazine. Education and career Navarro attended Tufts University on an academic scholarship and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972. After graduation, he served for three years in the Peace Corps in Thailand, where - his alma mater's student newspaper The Tufts Daily wrote in an article - "he discovered his passion for public policy." Navarro then returned to the U.S. and enrolled at Harvard Kennedy School, where he received a master's degree in public administration in 1979. He continued his postgraduate studies at Harvard and earned a Ph.D. in economics. After receiving his Ph.D., Navarro worked at the University of California, Irvine, where he was an economics and public policy professor at the Paul Merage School of Business, and he was eventually promoted to professor emeritus. Related: JD Vance's net worth: From venture capital to senator to VP Books and subsequent political career Navarro is the author of numerous books relating to economics. He wrote "The Coming China Wars" in 2006 and "Death by China" in 2011, both of which focused on concerns of China's growing global economic and political influence and how that could affect the U.S. Navarro's anti-China views caught the attention of Trump, and Trump used China as a focal point in his take on the unfair and disadvantageous trade practices of countries with the U.S. In 2016, Trump picked Navarro to serve in his first administration and lead the newly created Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy (OTMP). As director, Navarro advised Trump on policies to increase economic growth and to strengthen the country's manufacturing and defense industrial bases. He pushed for protectionist trade policies, and a particular target of this agenda was China, with which the U.S. had a trade deficit. Navarro's White House bio said that he "helped to reform the conventional arms transfer and unmanned aerial systems policies of the United States, and to expand foreign military sales to our Nation's partners and allies." After the end of Trump's first term, Navarro retreated into private life. In 2024, Navarro was ordered to pay a $9,500 fine and served four months in prison for contempt for refusing to appear before Congress to give testimony and produce documents as required by a subpoena as part of an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The investigating committee believed that, based on his public statements, he had relevant information on the attack. More on net worth: Scott Bessent's net worth: From hedge fund chief to US Treasury SecretaryHoward Lutnick's net worth: From Wall Street heavyweight to Commerce SecretaryMarco Rubio's net worth: From Florida legislator to secretary of state In Trump's second term, Navarro returned to public service and was named White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing to help with devising tariffs in a bid to protect American trade. Trump focused on a protectionist agenda and went further than his first term by being aggressive on trade policies with the imposition of high tariffs on China and other countries, including America's allies. The New York Times reported that Navarro was among the authors behind Project 2025, an initiative undertaken by Trump to reshape the federal government. Navarro's writing focused on trade. In early April 2025, Tesla (TSLA) CEO and White House adviser Elon Musk said in separate posts on his social media platform X that Navarro was "truly a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks" in response to Navarro's comments that Tesla was more of a car assembler than a car manufacturer because some important parts, such as batteries and electronics, were imported from Japan, China and Taiwan. Navarro replied that he has been called worse. In the 1990s, Navarro aspired to be a politician and made unsuccessful attempts at public office. In 1996, Navarro lost a run for the Democratic Party's nomination for the 49th Congressional District, which covers an area including San Diego and other coastal Californian towns and cities. Navarro's political affiliation has vacillated since he was eligible to vote. From the time before 1986 he was a Democrat and then switched to the Republican Party in 1989, according to a compilation by a website that gathers data on presidential staff, past and present. In 1991, he became an independent and then registered as a Democrat from 1994 to 2018. In 2018, he returned to the Republican Party. Related: How to track stock price changes from 52-week highs on Google Finance The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
New European
09-04-2025
- Automotive
- New European
Musk is right about tariff moron Navarro
Elon Musk called Peter Navarro, who is the man Trump has turned to for advice on his tariff trade policy, 'truly a moron'. This came after his colleague in the dysfunctional and dangerous MAGA administration justified putting tariffs on the imported parts that Musk puts in his Tesla cars on the grounds that 'he's not a car manufacturer. He's a car assembler.' It is hard to work out who the bigger moron is in America at the moment. Musk is, of course, furious, although perhaps not just because the tariffs on those car parts are going to cost him billions. In whatever passes for his heart, he knows that he has spent a good deal of time and money getting Trump elected while knowing full well what the implications of policies meant for Tesla. Who's the moron now? What matters more is that Navarro now is the man with Trump's ear. He is the one who has taken the president's long-held and utterly mistaken belief in tariffs and turned them into policy This is more important than a spat within the administration ('boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,' smiled Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt) not least because Navarro is demonstrably a fraud and an idiot. He served in Trump's first administration, where he fought measures to control Covid and recommended hydroxychloroquine as a treatment (it is an anti-malarial and didn't work). He also spread the baseless conspiracy theory that the scapegoated former presidential chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci was the 'father' of Covid and had even paid a Chinese lab taxpayers' money to develop the virus. Navarro then sought to overturn the 2020 election result and went to prison as a result. It is no wonder Trump loves him. But it is his 'economics' that is doing even more harm than his other mad conspiracy theories. Like many extremists, Navarro started up just pointing out some home truths: the Chinese currency is kept weak to encourage exports, China's environmental standards are awful, the Chinese state bullies foreign firms, working conditions are worse there than in America and therefore their products are cheaper. But his conclusions have become ever more radical. Navarro thinks the best response is to put such large tariffs on China (and others) that American companies will reshore their factories to the US. But just like in the UK finding people who want to work in glorified sweatshops is difficult, if not impossible, especially if you are deporting immigrants at the same time. It also ignores the obvious – that the US is a tech and services giant and benefits hugely from having other, cheaper countries make things for it. This is how world trade works. Navarro wants a return to mercantilism, the belief that only those who have trade surpluses are truly great nations. This was disproven 200 years ago by Adam Smith and Ricardo, normally pin-up boys of the far right. Which is perhaps why in his books including The Coming China Wars and Death By China, he quotes a mysterious expert called Ron Vara, which is obviously an anagram of his own name. Perhaps he just couldn't find anyone who agreed with him, which is quite possible. The list of world-renowned economists queuing up to denounce his plans runs into the hundreds. Or maybe he just values his own work above all others? Which is almost certainly true; self-doubt is not a Navarro trait. The fact is that Trump has been persuaded to commit economic suicide by a conspiracy loving, incompetent idiot. Someone even Elon Musk thinks is 'dumber than a sack of bricks'. Which means the real moron is not Musk or Navarro – it is Trump.
