China trade adviser rebukes Wall Street
Navarro says global billionaires’ push for fast deal is hindering Trump’s negotiations
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro warned Wall Street bankers and hedge-fund managers to back down from their push for President Donald Trump to strike a quick trade deal with China’s Xi Jinping.
“As part of a Chinese government influence operation, these global billionaires are putting a full-court press on the White House in advance of the G-20 in Argentina,” Navarro said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Friday. Their mission is to “pressure this president into some kind of deal” but instead they’re weakening his negotiating position and “no good can come of this.”
Navarro said investors should be redirecting their “billions” of dollars into helping rebuild areas hit by job losses in the manufacturing sector. “Wall Street, get out of those negotiations,” Navarro said. “Bring your Goldman Sachs money to Dayton, Ohio, and invest in America.”
Navarro didn’t offer more details on how Wall Street bankers or investors are pressuring the White House. But his comments came two days after former Goldman Sachs President and exTrump economic adviser Gary Cohn took a thinly veiled shot at Navarro, saying that Trump had found “one economist on Amazon who thinks trade deficits matter, and he listens to him.”
Cohn — along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, another former Goldman Sachs executive — have diverged on trade policy from Navarro and exWhite House strategist Steve Bannon, who advocate a more confrontational approach toward China.
Trump is expected to discuss trade with Xi when they meet at the Group of 20 summit taking place Nov. 30-Dec. 1 in Buenos Aires. While Trump has asked cabinet officials to outline the terms of a possible deal with Xi, Chinese officials have given no indication they’re ready to meet key U.S. demands, such as halting forced technology transfers or rolling back support for stateowned enterprises.
Navarro said simply buying more American soybeans and coal won’t satisfy the Trump administration, which wants deeper “structural change” in the Chinese economy.
On Monday before congressional midterm elections, Trump told a campaign rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that he still believed he and Xi could settle the dispute.