When Donald Trump was elected president, Peter Navarro was viewed as a fringe character even by the standards of the other misfit advisers heading for the White House. Now Navarro, 68, an abrasive former economics professor who has called China “the planet’s most efficient assassin”, is at the apex of Trump’s team. When the president signed an “America First” proclamation last week placing tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, Navarro scored a pivotal victory for White House nationalists. It triggered the resignation of Trump’s top trade adviser, Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president, who was viewed by much of Wall Street as a bulwark for financial stability. Navarro, Cohn’s rival, is a leading candidate to take over from him as trade adviser, a prospect…

Source: The Times March 11, 2018 00:00 UTC