Navarro Says He’d Short Navarro In Cohn Replacement Race

Well, you can rest (a little) easier because according to Peter Navarro himself, Peter Navarro is not likely to replace Gary Cohn:

NAVARRO SAYS HE’S NOT A CANDIDATE TO REPLACE COHN

That soundbite comes from a cameo he just made on Bloomberg TV and to be clear, it was the only positive part of the brief interview.

Markets seem to have pared losses once Navarro claimed he wasn’t in the running for Cohn’s vacated position, which should be a sign to the Trump administration about what investors think about Peter. Of course that nuance will be completely lost on them.

Again, the rest of the interview was a shitshow. Navarro parroted his own talking points that cast America as a victim of globalization and continued to push the absurd narrative that U.S. allies are somehow conspiring to take advantage of us on the way to impoverishing industrial workers and bankrupting American industry.

“Even bigger tariffs imposed on solar panels and washing machines earlier this year have already boosted those domestic industries,” he claimed, before insisting that “all we’re trying to do with the steel and aluminum tariffs is to defend America.”

Obviously, that’s fucking absurd. America is not under attack and thus there’s nothing to “defend” it from. Globalization just is. It is a phenomenon and a consequence of humanity’s advancement away from nationalism and inward-looking policies towards a future where everyone shares a common destiny.

Try as he might, Peter isn’t going to reverse that, and neither is Trump, and neither are you, and neither is Wilbur Ross, who showed up on CNBC this morning as part of the administration’s all-hands damage control effort.

If the best thing Peter said was that he wasn’t in the running to take Gary’s position, the worst thing he said was this:

Peter Navarro just said we can't defend our allies if our weapons are built out of imported steel and aluminum.

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) March 7, 2018