How unspeakably childish of one of Trump's top lieutenants:
Dr. Fauci is 79-years-old, and to the best of my knowledge has never been known for his baseball pitching skills, which lie juuust a little outside his profession of studying infectious diseases. One could more easily mock Navarro for virtually every stupid position (meaning every position) he has taken in his profession. Aside from inanely advocating the U.S.' withdrawal from President Obama's thoughtful Trans-Pacific Partnership, there's this, from Wikipedia:
According to Politico, "Navarro is perhaps the most extreme advocate in Washington, and maybe in all of economics, for an aggressive stance toward China"…. Navarro put his attention to China in the mid-2000s. His first publication on the subject is the 2006 book The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought, How They Can Be Won. Navarro has said that he started to examine China when he noticed that his former students were losing jobs, concluding that China was at fault"…
[In a 2012 documentary], of the more than dozen China specialists contacted by Foreign Policy, most either did not know of Navarro or had only interacted with him briefly. Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago professor of Chinese History, said that his "recollection is that [Navarro] generally avoided people who actually knew something about the country"….
Navarro has called for repatriating global supply chains. According to Politico's Jacob Heilbrunn, such a move "would be enormously costly and take years to execute"….
Navarro has characterized foreign purchases of U.S. companies as a threat to national security, but according to NPR, this is "a fringe view that puts him at odds with the vast majority of economists." Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin noted that the US government already reviews foreign purchases of companies with military or strategic value, and has on occasion rejected such deals….
Navarro has also said that the United States has "already begun to lose control of [its] food supply chain," which according to NPR, "sounded pretty off-the-wall to a number of economists" who noted that the US is a massive exporter of food. Dermot Hayes, an agribusiness economist at Iowa State University, described Navarro's statement as "uninformed"….
The Economist has described Navarro's ["odd-ball"] views on the trade deficit as "dodgy economics," while the Financial Times has described them as "poor economics."
I bet Fauci would have been in the strike zone if a face shot of Navarro had been in the catcher's mitt.
Well, see, the first thing you want to do if you consider China to be some sort of threat is ditch the TPP trade treaty that was actually designed to protect America’s family jewels (intellectual and similar property). The next step would be to start trade wars with all your onetime allies that you would absolutely need to constrain China. Then you back a Russian dictator against all those European allies and try to help him break up the EU. Don’t forget to undercut NATO and essentially remove any faith that America would honor its longtime mutual commitments. That is also essential. It wasn’t absolutely essential to fuck up the Iran nuclear deal, but it earns bonus points for pissing off literally everybody.
Once you have ticked all these boxes you are ready to take on China. And boy has that ‘leader of the free world’ psyched up the team to victory!
Posted by: Peter G | July 27, 2020 at 03:12 PM
I'm going off topic. I apologize. But I just lost it tonight.
A right winger, a relative, was watching me watch the news. And began to chime in with the stupidest commentary about how the COVID virus would end on November 3 as soon as Biden won (they seem to be reconciled to a Trump loss so I guess there's that) and that the 150,000 + deaths are a hoax. I was suddenly looking at Alex Jones only female with a bad perm. I said "you're not that stupid" and this person smirked and said no they weren't I was stupid because I believed the news coverage.
And I lost it. I literally screamed. I think it's possible that I dropped the F bomb. I know I dropped the food I was eating. I got so angry I had to leave. I was afraid I might get physical. (Not much threat I'm very small.) But I was amazed at the rage I felt. All I could think of was the agony those people went through and this uber "Christian" was saying these things. I felt sick. I still do.
That's all. I just needed to write this. I hate these people. The only way to tie this to the article is to say that Navarro knows his audience.
I have to go cry now. We have got to win this election.
Posted by: Freesia | July 27, 2020 at 11:05 PM
Hold fast. It, by which I mean Trump, will soon be over.
Posted by: Peter G | July 28, 2020 at 08:41 AM