Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell says she fully supports sound economic policies for the United States, but that President Donald Trump’s steep international tariffs are backed by “girl math” from trade adviser Peter Navarro, who is “kneecapping” the country.
Her “Bottom Line” co-host, Jackie DeAngelis, argued on Monday’s broadcast that Trump’s aggressive tariffs could be a strategy that forces global leaders to negotiate with Trump for better trade agreements, as Trump claims, prompting McDowell to push back.
“To be clear, I am all-in on a fair, level trading field,” McDowell said Monday.
“I am all-in on level tariffs with all nations,” she continued. “But I am not all-in on Peter Navarro and his reciprocal girl trade, girl math that’s kneecapping the United States, because the trade deficit is not a hallmark of all the cheating that goes on.”
McDowell explained, “And I go back to something he said last week, that ‘we have calculated the tariff rate required to eliminate the trade deficit.’ The United States issues the world’s reserve currency. You can’t eliminate the trade deficit.”
Trump announced a sweeping 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the U.S. last week, with levies on dozens of other countries set even higher. China was reportedly slapped with tariffs of more than 100%, prompting the country to hike its levies on U.S. imports to 84%.
Economists and foreign leaders have argued that Trump’s tariffs are “reciprocal” only by name and were calculated with irrelevant math. Navarro has since gotten into a public spat with Elon Musk, whose electric vehicle company, Tesla, relies on foreign supply chains.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
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Musk slammed Navarro on Tuesday as “truly a moron” for arguing Tesla isn’t a car manufacturer, but merely “a car assembler.” Later that day, former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said he personally would have fired the trade advisor “a long time” ago.
McDowell has clearly soured similarly on Navarro, and concluded Monday on her show: “The quicker that they get him off of TV and away from numbers, the better. And I’m not going to call it girl math anymore, I’m going to call it Navarro math.”