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White House trade adviser Peter Navarro at Donald Trump’s April 7 event announcing new tariffs.<\/span>Evan Vucci\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Elon Musk is not<\/span> always wrong. Musk\u2019s prediction<\/a> back in February that \u201csome of the things that I say will be incorrect\u201d was certainly right<\/a>, if understated. And on Tuesday, the billionaire, like a broken clock<\/a>, may have hit the target again when he attacked<\/a> Peter Navarro\u2014the Trump trade adviser and key architect of the president\u2019s thus-far disastrous tariffs\u2014as \u201ctruly a moron<\/a>\u201d and \u201cdumber than a sack of bricks<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To be sure, Navarro, who likes to be called <\/a>\u201cDr. Navarro,\u201d has a PhD in economics from Harvard<\/a>. He has a powerful position advising the president, as he did in Trump\u2019s first term. And he possesses an apparent surfeit of self-confidence. But Navarro has done a some really dumb shit, creating notable datapoints supporting Musk\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n Navarro spent four months in prison last year for contempt of Congress, an experience he has attempted capitalize on by claiming to be a victim of the same deep-state \u201clawfare\u201d that supposedly beset Trump. \u201cI went to prison so you won\u2019t have to,\u201d Navarro proclaimed<\/a> at the Republican National Convention last year, shortly after leaving lockup.<\/p>\n In fact, Navarro went to prison because he not only refused comply with a subpoena from House January 6 committee, but also refused<\/a> to show up or meaningfully respond to the committee.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I wrote<\/a> after Navarro\u2019s super short trial:<\/p>\n Courts have long\u00a0recognized<\/a>\u00a0that presidents can sometimes assert executive privilege to deny Congress information on confidential advice from executive branch advisers. But the power is limited. Presidents have to actually invoke privilege. Subjects of congressional subpoenas, even if they have a real privilege claim, have to engage with lawmakers and specify what they can and can\u2019t share.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where Navarro screwed up. In an emailed response to a committee lawyer who informed him of a subpoena seeking information related to his actions in the lead up to January 6, Navarro\u00a0wrote \u201cexecutive privilege\u201d without explaining further. He later claimed Trump had privately told him to invoke privilege, but he never documented that instruction and didn\u2019t show up for a scheduled deposition or bother to say if he had information the subpoena sought.<\/p>\n Prosecutors argued in court that Navarro\u2019s decision to largely ignore the request broke the law. If he wanted to argue executive privilege, he needed to assert it in response to specific questions and explain if he had documents he was not providing due to privilege.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cYou are not a victim,\u201d US District Court Judge Amit Mehta told<\/a> Navarro while sentencing him. \u201cYou are not the object of a political prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese are circumstances of your own making,\u201d the judge added.<\/p>\n Navarro emerged in late 2020 as key enabler of Trump\u2019s false claims that he was the rightful winner of that year\u2019s election. Navarro produced an eponymous\u00a0report<\/a> claiming, not persuasively<\/a>, that voter fraud cost Trump the race. Navarro also helped devise, according to a book he published, a plan called the \u201cGreen Bay Sweep\u201d that sought to use objections to the congressional certification of electoral votes as a way to stop Joe Biden from taking office. (One problem with Navarro\u2019s attempt to claim \u201cexecutive privilege\u201d to the January 6 committee was that, by then, he\u2019d already hawked a book on the topic.)<\/p>\n Before he went to prison, Navarro <\/strong>held<\/a> the title of \u201cinternational ambassador\u201d for the so-called New Federal State of China, an outfit founded in 2020 by Stave Bannon and Guo Wengui, a onetime Chinese billionaire real estate tycoon who became<\/a> a MAGA-boosting media mogul after fleeing to the United States in 2015.<\/p>\n The New Federal State of China claimed to be a government-in-waiting prepared to take over China after what, Guo argued, was the inevitable fall of the Chinese Communist Party. But in a trial last year, federal prosecutors argued the group was part of massive con by Guo, a scheme in which Guo won support from Chinese emigres and persuaded them to invest in businesses he launched, including a crypto venture Guo claimed would become China\u2019s official currency. The NFSC did not have employees and did little<\/a> beyond hold occasional events. But Navarro, along with Bannon, helped give<\/a> the organization legitimacy and the appearance of ties to Trump. Guo who was convicted of nine felonies, including<\/a> racketeering conspiracy and securities fraud. Navarro was not accused of any crimes related to his work for Guo.<\/p>\n Navarro has refused to comment on his work for the group, which appears to have involved showing up at events held by Guo and doing interviews with a Chinese-language news outfit Guo launched. It\u2019s not clear if Navarro was paid.<\/p>\n Navarro reportedly <\/a>got a job in Trump\u2019s first term after Jared Kushner searched Amazon for a person who has aggressively pushed for a confrontational trade policy with China. In five of Navarro\u2019s books, the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> in 2019, Navarro quoted a source called Ron Vara\u2014an anagram of Navarro\u2019s name\u2014who offered statements that supported Navarro\u2019s arguments. Vara, the Times<\/em> reported, is\u00a0\u201capparently a figment of Mr. Navarro\u2019s imagination\u201d\u2014a mini-scandal that Musk gleefully invoked Tuesday.<\/p>\n By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content.<\/p>\n Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara.<\/p>\n \u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Navarro, as my colleague Stephanie Mencimer has written<\/a>, \u201chas blamed every problem in America,\u00a0including abortion<\/a>, on trade issues and the death of manufacturing, which he sees as China\u2019s responsibility.\u201d And he has pushed ultra protectionist arguments that contradict basic economic theory, but which now prevail in the White House.<\/p>\n Navarro has told Trump what he what he wants to hear on trade, enabling the incoherent tariffs that even many hardcore Trump backers won\u2019t<\/a> defend. Even Elon Musk knows that is really dumb.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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