White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro slammed the media during a recent interview, arguing that news outlets are using “scare tactics” to inflict more fear on the public as President Trump enacts his trade agenda.
“Well, usually a deal, as the media loves to remind us, takes a long time — 18 months to whatever. But we’re going to do this in Trump time, which is to say regular time,” Navarro said Tuesday in an appearance on NewsNation’s “On Balance.”
“You will see, and you did mention that the American public has a short memory, all the misery that the media is inflicting upon it now, with all its scare tactics, will go away as the first deal comes,” he told host Leland Vittert.
Navarro predicted that the first trade deals the U.S. could strike are with the United Kingdom, India or South Korea. After those are taken care of, he argued, the public will see the effectiveness of Trump’s approach to trade.
“As soon as we begin to what will be a see a march of deals, people will begin to understand that the strategy that Trump has adopted is perfectly correct that the world needs to stop screwing us,” the trade adviser said.
Trump’s latest import tax rollout has ignited a tariff war with foreign trading partners and adversaries. While there are concerns around the country about the effect of the tariffs on the U.S. economy, Navarro contended on Tuesday that consumer anxiety will go away once the first trade deals are set in stone.
“We have virtually every nation in the world coming to us to negotiate less cheating,” he said. “And it’s a beautiful thing in the world to watch.”
Trump, in an interview Tuesday with ABC News’s Terry Moran, denied that the U.S. is heading for hard times in the wake of his tariffs, arguing that “everybody’s gonna be just fine.”
“It wouldn’t have been if I didn’t do this. I had a choice. I could leave it, have a nice, easy time. But I think ultimately you wouldn’t [have] an implosion,” Trump told the news outlet.
“Our country had inflation that was worse than they’ve ever had it before,” he continued. “You don’t mention that. Why don’t you mention that?”