Once a Dem Economist, Navarro Praises Trump Economy: Dow at 32,000 in 2020
Peter Navarro is an unusual sort of Democrat.
He’s from a period where the party was far more ideologically diverse. While he never won elective office, he’s considered one of the most prolific and influential economists of the past half-century.
He’s a strict environmentalist.
He’s also a trade hawk, one of the loudest voices condemning China’s various perfidies and supranational free trade agreements years before those talking points got any sort of serious traction in either party.
That’s what first attracted Trump to Navarro when he brought him on as an adviser to his 2016 campaign and presumably why Navarro accepted, despite the fact that sort of thing is the death knell for your career if you want to travel in respectable Democratic circles.
Well, never mind that anymore. Once endorsed by the Sierra Club during his run for San Diego mayor, they now say that his environmentalist good will “has been squandered by his myopic worldview and work on behalf of a hateful, xenophobic administration.”
He’s the kind of guy who now gets PolitiFact “Pants on Fire” ratings.
However, he thinks that a trade deal with China is just on the horizon — and that means that the Dow is going to be hitting record numbers in 2020.
In a Tuesday interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Navarro said the Dow Jones Industrial Average will hit “at least” 32,000 in 2020, even after a record 2019.
“It’s going to be the roaring 2020s next year,” Navarro said, adding that “32,000 is a conservative estimate of where we’ll be at the end of the year.”
Navarro also told host Joe Kernan he was confident the “phase one” trade deal with China was going to be signed.
“That one is in the bank, Joe,” he said.
“We’re just waiting for the Chinese translation of the 86-page agreement and I’m trying to figure out whether it’s going to be more pages or less in Chinese.”
That would go a long way to propelling the Dow above 32,000, considering it sat at a little over 28,700 as of Thursday morning.
Navarro also said the deal included provisions that caused the Chinese to leave the negotiating table last spring.
“It’s got great stuff in it,” Navarro said.
“It’s got essentially the same chapter we had in the May deal that the Chinese walked away from on intellectual property theft. So that’s a good deal.
“For Wall Street … financial market access for the banks, insurance companies and credit card companies,” he said.
He also hinted at potential deals with the United Kingdom after Brexit, as well as a number of other countries.
“Next year, 2020, we’re going to try to get something going with Great Britain, Vietnam, Europe and anybody else who wants to fairly trade with the United States of America,” he said.
Navarro remains one of the more controversial members of Trump’s administration, particularly because of his Democratic past — he ran for office three times in San Diego under the banner of the left and has supported a carbon tax and green energy in recent years. But he’s also a vehement protectionist, something that’s caused many pro-Trump economists to break with him.
That said, Navarro is highlighting what’s become the great success story of the Trump administration: the economy.
If cultural and social issues hadn’t become the all-encompassing barometer in the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump would be a shoo-in for a second term. Unemployment is ridiculously low, the Dow is ridiculously high and the Democrats don’t have a solution for anything economically.
That’s not what the Democrats want to make this about, however — and that’s why you’re not going to see a lot of talk about the economy from whoever the nominee is.
If they do talk about it, it’s going to be the usual platitudes — about how the economy isn’t working for working people, how this is helping the rich and leaving the poor behind, that sort of thing.
However, it’s proof that for all of that talk of a recession back in 2019 — and there was plenty of it in the media, although a lot of it you could confidently file under “wishful thinking” — the fundamentals of the American economy are amazingly strong.
It’ll be incredibly difficult for any Democratic candidate to counter a Dow Jones that’s at 32,000 points — if, indeed, that’s where it goes.
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