Former President Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro accused Wall Street titans and former government officials of working to disrupt the former president’s agenda during his tenure, according to an interview Semafor published on Tuesday.
Navarro is in a federal prison after being sentenced in January to four months, as well as ordered to pay $9,500 for contempt of Congress after defying a Jan. 6 congressional subpoena. The former Trump White House official told Semafor via email responses sent from the penitentiary’s law library, that certain Wall Street elites and administration officials sabotaged the former president’s trade agenda. (RELATED: ‘What Are They Afraid Of?’: Hunter Biden Says Joe ‘Saved My Life,’ Refuses To Appear For House GOP Deposition)
🚨Today marks exactly ONE MONTH since Dr. Peter Navarro reported to federal prison. As @DonaldJTrumpJr mentioned on Dr. Navarro’s Substack, “We must stop the WOKE-LEFTISTS from ruining our GREAT NATION.”
Dr. Navarro was one of @realdonaldtrump ‘s top advisors, and is releasing…
— Peter Navarro (@RealPNavarro) April 16, 2024
“I’m sure if Jamie raises $100 million for Trump 2024 and doesn’t hedge his Biden bet, there may be an ambassadorship somewhere in Asia where JPMorgan helped offshore millions of American jobs,” Navarro told Semafor in response to a question about whether people like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon could have a spot in a second Trump term. “Frankly, [Blackstone CEO] Steve Schwarzman’s unforgiveable alleged unregistered foreign lobbyist activities in weakening the China trade deal has made it difficult for those of us in Trump World to trust that Wall Street denizens like Dimon, [Citadel CEO] Ken Griffin, and Schwarzman will ever represent Main Street.”
Navarro particularly criticized Trump’s former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and his former Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin for their alleged actions during the former president’s administration.
“Gary Cohn did everything he could to block Trump’s trade agenda, particularly steel and aluminum tariffs. When [former Commerce Secretary] Wilbur Ross and I finally outmaneuvered him, he quit in a huff — good riddance,” Navarro said. “Mnuchin did everything he could as well to stop or soften Trump’s trade agenda and regularly clashed with Ross, Lighthizer, and myself. Together, Cohn and Mnuchin prove, as I wrote in my Taking Back Trump’s America book, that Bad Personnel is both Bad Policy and Bad Politics.”
Navarro has been a major proponent of tariffs and disputed they contribute to inflation during the Semafor interview.
“The imposition of tariffs on Communist China had ZERO impact on inflation,” he said. “In a general equilibrium economic world, tariffs over time boost growth and real wages; they are not inflationary.”
Navarro asserted he presented a “mountain” of evidence during his testimony in legal proceedings and argued he was entitled to claiming executive privilege. A federal judge threatened Navarro in February to hold him in contempt if he neglected to hand over emails from his time in the Trump administration to the National Archives in a ruling an appeals court affirmed in April.
Cohn, Mnuchin, Dimon and Schwarzman did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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