Trump picks Peter Navarro to head new White House Trade Council

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Donald Trump picked eccentric economist, author and filmmaker Peter Navarro to head a new National Trade Council in the White House.

Friends of the Earth Senior Trade Analyst Bill Waren issued the following response: 

Friends of the Earth has long called for the end of the revolving door between Wall Street and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the White House and for a stop to trade deals that rollback sensible environmental and climate safeguards.  

The selection of Peter Navarro, the author of “Death by China,” to head a new National Trade Council in the White House, however, will only magnify Wall Street domination of trade policy and ramp up trade deal attacks on public health and the planet. Navarro’s patron and co-author of the Trump campaign policy papers on trade is proposed Commerce Secretary Wilber Ross, a Wall Street man worth an estimated $2.9 billion. Ross is expected to take the lead on new trade negotiations. 

We fear that under the smokescreen of Trump’s jingoism and ethnic slurs, Navarro, and Ross will use trade negotiations to, in the words of President F.D. Roosevelt, “clip the wings of the American Eagle to feather their own nests.”

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Expert contact: Bill Waren, (202) 222-0747 
Communications contact: Michael Khoo, (202) 669-7911, [email protected]