Peter Navarro Invented an Expert for His Books, Based on Himself (2019)
108 comments
·April 6, 2025pjdesno
Navarro is still a professor emeritus at UC Irvine.
That's just an honorary title, and at most places can be revoked for sufficient damage to the university's reputation. This would seem to be the case, especially because at least one of the books with the fake economics expert seems to have been written while he was still an active faculty member there.
His association with Irvine has been mentioned on national news, and although folks in academia may not realize that the general public thinks "professor emeritus" means he's still associated with the university, they're going to learn really quickly. Plus the "fake expert" thing is just so embarrassingly stupid...
sramsay
> That's just an honorary title
It's true that it's an honorific, but I think it has a little more teeth than you think. At the institutions I've worked at, it comes with a few perks (like faculty-level library privileges), but it also includes the ability to serve on MA/PhD committees -- which is to say, you can be part of the group of people who certify the completion of an academic degree, which is not a privilege normally extended to retired professors. I've seen it granted when someone is switching institutions, but would like to remain the major advisor for a PhD candidate.
But whatever the case, the person is absolutely "still associated with the university;" that is part of the reason they're awarded. It's an award, certainly, but it's also a way for an academic to keep their credentials and for a university to keep their association with a (sometimes famous) academic.
But yes: It can be revoked at any time. I would be surprised if this one wasn't.
compsciphd
huh? Maybe for "internal" committee. For my PHD defense, I had 3 internals and 2 externals and the externals could have been anyone my advisor approved of (in practice for me, I picked my committee and my advisor just rubber stamped it, perhaps because he was content with my choices)
sramsay
I'm talking about who can sign the forms that say you fulfilled the requirements of a degree. Random people cannot do that. Emeritus professors usually retain that ability.
I've served on PhD defenses where you had uncredentialed people on the committee, but who could not sign off on the degree.
This probably looks different to you if you're a student, because you typically don't see the paperwork that gets sent around afterward. But a diploma is a legal document. There is no "rubber stamping" of anything. Not if the school would like to maintain its accreditation.
dagw
externals could have been anyone my advisor approved of
Don't they at least need to have a at least somewhat relevant PhD? Where I live that is definitely the case.
galaxyLogic
Right, but if they revoke his title then Trump will remove all funding from that university. That is how it goes, everybody knows.
jredwards
The first time I heard this, it took me about four seconds to realize that it was an anagram of his last name. You'd think anyone reading his books might have pondered that for a minute.
CRConrad
Yeah, same. Utterly perplexing.
ck2
If you think the fake-plan tariffs are going to destroy things
remember the "de minimus" is going away May 2nd too
each little shipment from aliexpress, etc.
will have a tariff of 30% of the "value of the postal item containing goods for merchandise"
with a minimum fee of $50
FIFTY DOLLARS
It purposely kills all overseas shipments of even small items.
How many years until all that made in USA? TEN years? Never?
sidvit
If you’re a manufacturer how quickly can you even stand up a factory in the US and train that factory of workers to produce your item? 3-4 years? What’s the chances republicans still control congress by that time? The presidents continued ability to enforce this relies on controlling both chambers because the tarrifs are being put up under an emergency declaration that congress has the power to override. If you don’t think that’ll continue to be the case in 2 years time it seems very difficult to justify the investment, and if markets continue to crater I would think it would further reinforce this
jvm___
Why would you stand up a factory based on humans? When widget-businessman calls up the companies that install widget making machines they'll get the latest and greatest automated production machines in the least human labor intensive ways possible.
WarOnPrivacy
I have a client who imports stock from China. Tariff burdens are forcing changes.
Besides dropping some product lines they're moving to offshore local jobs to remote Filipino workers.
ck2
Brings up an interesting question
if territories like Puerto Rico would finally get some serious investment if they are tariff immune
WarOnPrivacy
That's a interesting thought. I'm going to ask around and see what I can learn.
insane_dreamer
This one I mind less than the other tariffs; it'll stem the flood of low-cost crap that has flooded Amazon / Temu etc.
ck2
Um, it's going to "stem" ALL stuff on Amazon/Temu etc
No DIY person who needs just one little part is going to pay $50
Not just TVs, fans, radios, etc.
ie. I wanted to get some $10 PM2.5 sensors but they will be $50 now
jayd16
It's 30% or $50 but does it take the high or low?
markhahn
Why is this not simply disqualifying?
localghost3000
Because nothing matters. Just wait out the outrage cycle. In a week or two the general public will have moved on. Signalgate, the president being convicted of numerous felonies, etc being a few examples that pop into my head. None of this should be status quo but we live in interesting times as they say.
dummydummy1234
Maybe, but it is a lot harder to 'move on' when your retirement is down 20+%
One can have the naive hope that people will start to care about competency.
Of course, we also have covid with estimated 1M Excess deaths... So, probably not.
Jtsummers
https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/list/all?s...
Vanguard's lifecycle funds (picking them because they get promoted a lot as a good choice, courtesy of good marketing and lower fees and generally good returns). Their 2030 fund, the one that people are recommended to select if they're retiring around 2028-2032, is down 4.54% YTD, and down 1.42% for the last year. The current market effects have wiped out over a year in gains for a relatively conservative fund.
And that's all from the last two trading days, it was slightly up YTD on Wednesday. And all of this is before the effects of the tariffs come into play. We haven't actually seen the effect of higher import costs hitting companies and consumers yet.
So people approaching retirement are getting hit and hit hard, but it's not quite 20% for them unless they selected an aggressive investment strategy for some reason.
The worst for the Vanguard funds are down about 8% YTD (and likely to get worse) for anyone 25 years or more away from retirement.
candiddevmike
It's starting to matter. Trump's downfall will be his base seeing him as anything but a successful, smart businessman. He's struggling to control the narrative with how many gaffs and scandals have occurred, and it's starting to hit his base and his brand:
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-update...
The tariffs are probably going to be a historical "turn of the tide" moment.
brookst
It’s definitely a test of whether we’ve got a political problem or a cult problem. I’m not as optimistic as you.
kubb
There’s a deeply rooted assumption that both sides are equivalent. This allows one of the sides to do whatever without its validity being disqualified, because any doubt is simply overridden by the assumption.
rexpop
"Lighten up and have fun," he says at the end. For what will we actually hold him accountable? It's a smoking gun that he's a bullshitter, but it's not a crime to be a racist.
CRConrad
> but it's not a crime to be a racist.
That's the problem: It should be, if not legally, at least in terms of electability.
But with enough of a proportion of racists in the electorate, it's no wonder racists get elected.
Good bye and godspeed, America; it was nice knowing you.
galaxyLogic
Right, but it is in large part because of Navarro that Trump thinks universal tarifss are a great idea, since Navarro advocated for them and created credibility for his theories by inventing this fictional "expert".
It gave Trump plausible deniability, he can claim he's just doing what great experts from the academia are advocating. And it gave us the market-crash and global trade-war. It's easy for billionaires to lighten up and have fun, but not for most other people.
Tariffs are a sales-tax, which means poor people have to relinguish a larger proportion of their income to the government, than rich people. It is great wealth transfer from ordinary people to the rich. And one can only conjecture that THAT is why Trump and Navarro advocate for it.
CRConrad
> And one can only conjecture that THAT is why Trump and Navarro advocate for it.
I'd guess: Navarro yes; Trump, no. In his case, it's just stupidity.
stevenwoo
Three members from of the cabinet have one or more sexual assault or rape accusations and the president can no longer claim he did not rape Jean in public without committing defamation. And Trump got re elected and only a token handful of GOP senators voted against any of those cabinet nominees. Consequences only matter if one is not in the clique.
Cheer2171
It is, but qualifications no longer matter. In fact, they are now seen as liabilities by the current regime.
StefanBatory
To quote from previous Polish govt - "we do not hire experts, because when we hired experts they did not want to implement our program"
Jtsummers
I'm unfamiliar with Polish politics, and a quote like that does not surprise me coming from politicians (see "alternative facts" in the first Trump administration to excuse outright lies), but do you have a source for that or at least a source for what you're paraphrasing if it's not a direct quote?
tim333
It's really just a literary device in some books he wrote. Navarro's actual ideas being a little crackpot is more of an issue.
georgemcbay
All that matters for his continued employment as an adviser is Trump's opinion of him.
This behavior is not likely to be seen as a negative by Trump, but rather as a positive "go-getter" trait.
Trump has employed this method of inventing people to talk himself up for many decades:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonyms_used_by_Donald_Trum...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsYKRUE_D5g
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/audio-from-may...
Its actually reasonable to believe that Navarro may have got the idea from Trump whether directly or indirectly.
jredwards
Trump has long done the same thing. His alter ego was John Baron.
photochemsyn
Economic models need a modern overhaul, but the entrenched nature of academic economic programs - hidebound is not a bad descriptor - makes this fairly unlikely.
A central issue is 'aggregate demand' - this needs replacement by individual-level demand analysis. An obvious issue is that if a small wealthy sector of society is consuming heavily, while the vast majority is in a belt-tightening phase, any aggregate demand measure is not going to capture either sector and will have a massive distorting effect on projected outcomes. Yes, individual-level models would be vastly more computationally demanding, but this is now possible.
Similarly, consider the effect of lowering interest rates in a system where a small wealthy sector has mechanisms in place to capture all that liquidity, so instead of small business starts increasing, stock buybacks by major corporations are the norm. Again, this is where 'aggregate demand' misses that fine-scale structure that really controls outcomes.
Fundamentally, these economic models aren't capturing the effects of gross wealth inequality. One of the most astute economic contrarians who raises this issue is Gary Stevenson:
pmags
I'm not a big fan of the Cato Institute, but here's an interesting take on Navarro's evolution on trade and tariff's from 2018:
https://www.cato.org/regulation/fall-2018/peter-navarros-con... Lemieux, Pierre. 2018. Peter Navarro's Conversion. Regulation, Volume 41, Issue 3, pp. 36 - 43
OutOfHere
To give readers some background, Peter Navarro is the person that Trump primarily got the tariff idea from.
maxerickson
That's not really fair to Trump, who has long been a huge fan of tariffs.
Navarro is just the idiot sycophant who agreed with him that they are great.
af78
It's worse than that. Navarro has sincerely held these views (that imports are inherently bad for the economy) for a long time. He is to economists what flat earthers are to astronomers. Imagine if an anti-vax activist was hired at the Depart of Health. Oh, wait...
thimkerbell
[flagged]
YZF
I don't think we want to view HN as competition for karma points or karma points as some sort of validation. It would be nice if we could stop turning HN into a political battleground but I guess that war has been lost.
belter
Which idea exactly?: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KmVBfI4_6a4
af78
What makes the story tragic is that he got a job that gives him such an influence on trade policy. How he got the job would be funny if the consequences weren't so dire:
> Navarro was invited to be an advisor after Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner saw on Amazon that he co-wrote Death by China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro#Trump_campaign_a...
ck2
For anyone willing to watch a MSNBC video segment without bias
this explains what you are saying exactly in more detail:
af78
Incidentally, this segment is how I learned about it. I recommend watching it. HN favors text content, though, this is why I quoted text.
pstuart
OMFG.
The people that need to watch that clip never will.
belter
This was tough to watch....
steveBK123
Like orange man’s made up PR and hype man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonyms_used_by_Donald_Trum...
rsynnott
What is with these Trump-world people and making up people who agree with them? Trump himself had John Barron, there was that whole thing with Musk’s weird alts, and so on.
It’s really quite odd.
https://archive.ph/samFv