Peter Navarro, President-elect Trump’s previous and incoming White House trade adviser, said it’s best to let Trump “do his thing” in building relationships with the Chinese and other foreign actors so that he can obtain the best deals for America.
In an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill,” Navarro, a well-known China critic, was asked about Trump’s comments at a Monday press conference that “China and the United States can together solve all of the problems of the world.”
Navarro — who was Trump’s trade adviser in his first administration and will be a senior counselor for trade and manufacturing in Trump’s second — said he was with Trump when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping on numerous occasions, and he is confident in the president-elect’s ability to navigate relationships.
“They have a relationship which can be productive dealing with things like Ukraine and Gaza and oil and all of that,” Navarro said about Trump and Xi.
“So what we do is we trust Donald Trump in developing relationships with Xi, with Putin, with whoever is out there, [Recep Tayipp] Erdogan in Turkey — people the left doesn’t like because of their obvious authoritarian methods — yet for the good of this country, we have to let the boss do his thing in order to get the best deals for America,” Navarro said. “Let’s see what happens.”
Last week, Trump invited Xi to attend his inauguration in January. Navarro shot back when asked whether he was softening his position on China.
“No, not at all,” Navarro said. “Okay, we had that kind of relationship. Let 1,000 flowers bloom, as the Chinese might say, but we slapped them hard with tariffs, and we were the toughest presidency on China ever.”
“And they’re taking us apart now, and we’ve got to do something about that,” Navarro said.
The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns NewsNation.
