Peter Navarro to CFR: America First Doesn’t Like You

Top White House advisor gives frank assessment of the globalist outfit.

Peter Navarro, White House senior counsel for trade and manufacturing, provided a blunt assessment on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): America First does not like you. The CFR has been highly critical of President Donald Trump and his public policy pursuits, from tariffs to the border. But Navarro brought a baseball bat to an event and hit what MAGA would call a home run.

Peter Navarro Critiques the CFR

Peter Navarro, one of the architects behind the president’s trade agenda, appeared at an October 17 CFR event, highlighting the America First agenda. While he pontificated on the vital tenets of Trumponomics 2.0 and what the administration is doing, Navarro also presented a frank assessment of the CFR:

“If you ask an AI search engine – try it, I did – it will tell you the Council on Foreign Relations embodies an establishment, technocratic, and globalist ideology, uncomfortably wedded with Wall Street and the multinational corporations that love open borders, cheap offshore labor, and an endless stream of subsidized imported goods. By contrast, the Trump administration, since 2017, has stood squarely with the people who make and grow things in this country, our farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, and workers.”

While the CFR, its donors, and the audience would dismiss Trump’s America First agenda as “populism” or “nationalism,” Peter Navarro stated that it “simply means doing what is best for Americans first, protecting their jobs, communities, and industrial base.” He believes the era of globalization and surrender is over. “And it’s long past time for the Council on Foreign Relations to catch up with the world it refuses to understand,” he said.

So, are these accurate comments? Like everything else in life, it is about trade-offs.

The Economics of Trade-Offs

Legendary economist Thomas Sowell delivered possibly one of the most powerful two sentences written in the field. In his A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Sowell wrote: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” Put simply, there are no perfect solutions, and selecting one benefit means sacrificing another.

Economic observers on all sides of the political spectrum will espouse on the advantages and drawbacks of allowing millions of illegal immigrants to cross the southern border. Others will pontificate on the pros and cons of a globalized marketplace. The experts will argue about whether the United States should be an industrial behemoth or a customer for the world’s manufacturers.

Is the world as black and white? Not necessarily – it is about making choices that may or may not benefit the country uniformly. Immigration is a perfect illustration of the common challenges modern-day advanced economies face.

The problem: Americans, Britons, Canadians, and Europeans are not having children, threatening the entitlement system and the broader economy.

The solution: Import millions of individuals, many of whom will have children, to fill the gap.

The consequence: The nation’s entire culture will be transformed, leaving local inhabitants feeling like strangers in their own country. Many of these foreigners may not even contribute to the economy, instead relying on the entitlement system that they were imported to fix.

In terms of what Peter Navarro is discussing, the American people have overwhelmingly shown support for the America First agenda, ranging from border closure to revitalizing the blue-collar population. But while this is what the nation wants, a possible long-term outcome is higher prices and labor shortages that could harm economic growth, social safety nets, and the federal budget.

Right or Wrong

The CFR is one of many organizations that suffer from a mindset that Sowell called the “vision of the anointed.” Academics, donors, and permanent members of the chattering class will dismiss empirical evidence for feelings and embrace the hivemind without any rigorous debate – anything to the contrary of government-managed globalism is viewed as the far-right or other asinine labels that crumble under a modicum of scrutiny.

President Trump’s tariff agenda is the long game, and, as such, will require time before it can receive a verdict as to whether it was beneficial for the United States or a plan that backfired.