The tariff war unleashed by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has not only generated a wave of repercussions worldwide, but also in his own government, two of his closest advisors maintain a fierce dispute.
Peter Navarro, commerce and manufacturing advisor, has declared during an interview at ‘NBC News’ that Tesla owner Elon Musk, “It is not a car manufacturer. He is a car assembler”and has pointed out that the origin of the pieces of their cars come from Asian countries such as China, Taiwan or Japan, while the Interest of the US government is that they are completely manufactured in the US.
Musk has not taken to respond to these accusations and, through his social network ‘X’, he said that Navarro is “Imbécil” and “darker than a sack of bricks”. He also assured that the accusations of the trade advisor and manufactures are “demonstrably false” And he added that “Tesla has most cars made in the United States.” From the White House, its spokesman, Karoline Leavitt, has indicated that this confrontation is “A child thing.”
Economist, conspiracy and detractor of China
Peter Navarro (Cambridge, Massachusettes, July 15, 1949) is a American economist formed in Harvard who already knows the American government network closely. In the course of Trump’s first term he was appointed director of the National House of Commerce of the White House and, later, director of the Office of Commercial and Manufacturing Policy. It is also Professor of Economic Science and Public Policies at the Paul Merage Business School at the University of California in Irvine.
Since his entry into politics in 2000 he has defended postulates, considered marginal by other economists, in which accuses China of being a country that threatens the rules of the free market and which impoverishes the United States So it is a firm defender of tariff policies to reduce trade deficit.
His confrontation with Musk is not the first one he has with a senior White House official. During the pandemic caused by the COVID-19, while integrated the team that planned the Trump administration response to the health crisis, He faced Anthony Faucidirector of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, due to discrepancies related to which treatment it was more effective in curbing the spread of the virus.
Subsequently, He tried to cancel the result of the 2020 elections and poured conspiracy theories about electoral fraud. In 2022 he was summoned to declare even twice by Congress, however, he refused to go. This earned him that his case was referred to the Department of Justice and that, in 2022, a large jury accused him of two charges of contempt of Congress. A year later, Navarro He was convicted and in 2024 he was sentenced to four months in jail. In this way it became the first former White House official imprisoned for contempt of Congress.
