New York, Dec 21 (EFE).- President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday the creation of a council that will advise him on trade matters, adding that it will be headed by economist and academic Peter Navarro.
The National Trade Council will have the mission of advising Trump on “innovative strategies in trade negotiations,” as well as coordinating “with other agencies to assess U.S. manufacturing capabilities and the defense industrial base” and helping “match unemployed American workers with new opportunities in the skilled manufacturing sector,” the transition team said.
US trade negotiations are essentially handled by the Trade Representative, whose office is in charge of negotiating and supervising the country’s assorted trade pacts. Trump still has not publicly announced whom he will select for that post.
The Department of Commerce is another institution whose mission is to create the conditions and opportunities that foster the country’s economic growth, along with setting strategic goals and serving as a channel between the business world and the White House.
Trump’s transition team said in a statement announcing the pick that Navarro is a “visionary” economist who will “develop trade policies that shrink our trade deficit, expand our growth, and help stop the exodus of jobs from our shores.”
During his presidential campaign, the president-elect made trade a cornerstone of his stump speeches, claiming that the government had negotiated bad trade deals with many countries and promising to renegotiate those pacts with important US trade partners like Mexico and China.
Navarro – a 67-year-old University of California, Irvine, professor – worked with Trump during the campaign along with the mogul’s later pick for secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, to develop the trade and economic agenda for the future administration.
In addition to heading the new council, Navarro will also act as presidential adviser and director of trade and industrial policy.
Navarro has written several books including “Death by China: How America Lost its Manufacturing Base,” which also was made into a documentary film.