Senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro again took the high road in an apparently one-sided spat with Elon Musk.
As Tesla’s CEO, Musk has critiqued the 25% tariffs on foreign automobiles that Navarro insists his company qualifies for. While Musk claims “Tesla has the most American-made cars,” Navarro claimed “in many cases,” the electric vehicles are made in Japan and China. In response, Musk called the adviser to President Donald Trump “truly a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
“I’ve been called worse. Everything is fine with Elon,” Navarro said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Elon is doing a great job with his team with waste, fraud, and abuse. That’s a tremendous contribution to America, and no man doing that kind of thing should be subject to having his cars firebombed by crazies.”
“Is he disagreeing with the president’s policy, Mr. Navarro?” host Kristen Welker asked.
“So let’s talk about the zero tariff issue because this is really kind of interesting,” Navarro said. “The big problem we have are the non-tariff barriers, the currency manipulation, the dumping, the back taxes and all of that stuff that — that we have no defense against other than tariffs right now.”
PETER NAVARRO IMPLORES ‘TRUST IN TRUMP’ ON TARIFFS BRINGING ‘PROSPERITY AND PRICE STABILITY’
Meanwhile, most tariffs against foreign countries have been negotiated down to 10% but won’t begin for another 90 days. China remains the outlier with a 145% tariff.
Navarro’s second stint of service as an adviser to Trump follows him being convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress after refusing to turn over documents to the Jan. 6 committee and declining to testify to them. As a result, he served four months in prison in 2024.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
