President Trump’s trade and manufacturing adviser said the Great Depression is not again on us, pushing back against the economic “pity party” he said was held on the Sunday news shows.
“Anybody who thinks this is the Great Depression doesn’t understand either history or economics,” White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Director Peter Navarro said on Monday, speaking to Fox News. “The Great Depression was a 10-year process. It came out of the end of World War I. It went through an inflation and then a deflation cycle. It was accompanied by catastrophic applications of currency, trade, fiscal, and monetary policy, and it lasted a very, very long time.”
Navarro has for three years advocated tariffs and trade barriers as part of Trump’s “America First” strategy and called for returning manufacturing to the United States.
As the policy coordinator for the national Defense Production Act, he has been tasked with rallying companies to produce key equipment for the fight against the coronavirus.
“Every time you hear that ‘pity party’ stuff, remember to look into the future, see where we need to go, and what we need to do, and that’s bringing manufacturing and supply chains home, starting with our pharmaceutical supply chains and our medical supplies and equipment like masks,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing. I’ve have seen miracles here. I’ve seen a plant in Kokomo, Indiana, with General Motors stood up in 17 days, and three days later, we had ventilators go into hospitals in Gary, Indiana.”
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Trump on Friday told Fox News he didn’t know what he would do about the China trade deal.
Asked if the president should tear up the deal, Navarro said, “That’s well above my pay grade and decision-making process. That’s a decision for the president.”
He continued: “What we all we need to do here is focus on the original mission of Donald J. Trump, which is to bring manufacturing onshore — having American people make things here.”
In a letter to the National Security Council in late January, Navarro warned that the coronavirus could kill more than 500,000 people and cost nearly $6 trillion. By late February, Navarro, in a memo addressed to the president, estimated the potential for 2 million lives lost. “This is NOT a time for penny-pinching or horse trading on the Hill,” Navarro wrote.
