When Trump gathered his advisory group to decide whether to reach an agreement with China, Peter Navarro prepared a series of objections.

During a meeting at the White House two weeks ago, Navarro, Trump's top trade adviser, suggested that a deal to lift tariffs with China would make the United States soft. According to him, those who espouse the idea of deferring to Beijing are "globalists".

That's the familiar argument of this "hawkish" official, who has spent the past three years cheering Trump on to launch a trade war with China. Navarro's warnings about China's ambition and the threat they posed to the United States prompted Trump to use tariffs as powerful weapons to attack his opponents, despite opposition from senior advisers. other.

However, during the meeting two weeks ago, Trump was no longer convinced by Navarro's point of view. As the 2020 election draws near, Trump dismisses his concerns, accepts the first phase deal, halt plans to impose new taxes and reduce taxes on some Chinese goods, in return for a commitment from Beijing is buying more American goods.

"The deal with China is a huge deal," Trump said at an event at the White House last week. "And I'm not a globalist."

For the past three years, Navarro, 70, has been likened to a "warrior" on Trump's trade front. He urged the President to tear up and rewrite trade deals to make them more beneficial to Americans. Whether a scholar with little experience working in government or business, Navarro exerted a major influence on U.S. trade policy by promoting Trump's view that China "robs" the economy. America.

Navarro does not know Chinese and has only visited the country twice. Even his colleagues disliked his harsh stance with China and sometimes tried to block Navarro from approaching the President.

However, Navarro's view had a profound impact, even dissidents acknowledging that he had foresight. "He received a lot of criticism from supporters of free trade in the Republican party, but was one of the first to sound the alarm about China many years ago," said Stephen Moore, economist. of the Heritage Foundation, says. "Now many people, including myself, consider Chinese trade policies to be truly harmful to the US economy."

While Trump tends to find ways to ease tensions with China and finalize trade deals with Canada, Mexico, Japan and South Korea, Navarro is like a warrior seeking new battles. Many other US hawks also claim that Beijing has repeatedly broken promises so it is hard for them to trust the deal.

"I am skeptical of any important agreement," said Greg Autry, a professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, who once wrote with Navarro a book about China. "If you watch Chinese people for long, you will see they don't respect the agreement."

It was the stance on China that helped Navarro join Trump's close advisory group. As a professor of business at the University of California, Irvine, Navarro has failed five times in the race to MPs and mayors. When the political career did not take off, Navarro continued to teach, write books about business and investment.

Navarro became skeptical about China in the 1970s, when he was a Peace Corps volunteer (American volunteer program) operating in Thailand. He traveled to many parts of Asia and noticed China's negative impact on the economies of its neighbors. He began to be skeptical about how Chinese trade activities affected the United States after they joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, especially when many of his students complained they were out of work due to compete from China.

He wrote a number of hard-line books with China, including "Death at the Hand of China" and "Upcoming War with China", which Trump listed in 2011 as one of his favorite books. .

In the book, Navarro and co-author Autry criticize China for its "unethical" economic practices and the production of dangerous products, such as flammable baby overalls and fake Viagra drugs. They also blame multinational companies like Walmart for using cheap Chinese goods, making American manufacturers unable to compete.

Navarro's view caught Trump's attention. Navarro joined Trump's campaign as an economic advisor in 2016 and quickly gained trust. Billionaire calls Navarro "my tough guy with China".

Navarro plots a list of China's disturbing economic behaviors, policies, and activities, including cybercrime and theft of U.S. intellectual property. He warned Trump that China always broke promises and refused to change behavior. He said tariffs were the most effective way to force Beijing to change.

In 2018, Navarro's vision of confrontation with China was realized by Trump's tax imposition. The 25% tax on US $ 34 billion of Chinese goods in July 2018 quickly escalated to a tax on US $ 360 billion of products and the threat of taxing nearly all Chinese goods.

Economic pressure has put Beijing at the negotiating table. Later this year, Trump accepted to reduce tensions with the first phase agreement, agree to reduce some taxes, cancel the new tax plan in exchange for China buying more agricultural products and American companies have more access. Chinese market. However, the deal did not require any major structural changes from China - something Navarro tried to push. Trump said those things will be resolved in future negotiations.

But Navarro is still trying to find other ways to contain China's economic power. The United States has withdrawn from the global postal treaty, which allows Chinese businesses to transport international parcels at much cheaper rates than the United States.

He pushed for stricter inspections of Chinese packages at ports to crack down on fake goods and take part in a revitalization project for US shipyards. Earlier this year, when the chief executive of the maritime services firm Crowley Maritime told Navarro that the navy was in the process of buying a shipping vessel from China, Navarro intervened to "sink" the deal.

"My philosophy in life and work is to take into account the situation, predict the problems that the President will want to handle and solve them," Navarro said.