Trump adviser Peter Navarro on interest rates

When you say go down, you mean in an aggregate sense. You mean not as high as people were fearing they would go. Because there have been some-- It's been going down. But we always beat the estimates.

Right. I mean, today it was, like, 1% lower than it was last month. But here's the point. It's like, when he holds the rates up like he's doing, that imposes real costs on the American people. If you're trying to get a mortgage-- That's why I mentioned. The lagging indicator is housing construction, housing sales, and consumerism around those parts of the economy. We've got debt that we've got to finance. 20% to 30% of the debt we finance is short-term debt that we use. So we're paying tens of billions of dollars more for that. It's suppressing GDP growth. It's probably going to cost us a half a point of GDP growth, which is about 750,000 jobs. I don't know what this guy is thinking, other than the fact that I just-- I don't know what he's thinking. President's displeased, but he's not going to fire him. Yeah. What I was hoping for-- and I'm still hoping for this-- is that the Board of Governors themselves-- there are seven people that make this decision. It's not Powell. He's not a dictator on this. The problem is that four of the appointees are Democrats and then Powell. So you got five out of seven who might be anti-Trump. So but they got to get over that. It's like, everything says cut rates. We should be at least 50 to maybe even 100 basis points lower now than we are. And that would be a tremendous boon to everybody.

Let me ask you some very basic questions about what's coming ahead. August 12 is the deadline for China and the US to resolve its trade differences. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, said earlier this week it will probably be a 90-day extension. The Chinese are basically announcing there will be a 90-day extension. Will there be?

Well, as the boss says, let's see. I never get ahead of that. But things are really going well. They were in-- Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer were in Stockholm for three days talking to the Chinese, and it went very well. We're in a very good place. It's regrettable that the Chinese will not do seemingly anything about killing Americans with fentanyl. That one really hits close to home for a lot of people. But that one's going well. So let's just see what happens. We do have over 50% tariff on them. And that's more than appropriate because of the unfair trade practices that they impose on us. So we're in a good place. Look, Garrett-- That feels good. So what are you saying? There's going to be an extension, and that deal is going to get done by year end? Let's see what happens. I never try to-- I never break news. I just simply report what's happened so far, but try to get behind the scenes--

But you're discouraged about-- --for you. --China on fentanyl. And the president is. I-- look, they're killing people. I was here in the first term. The president of China said in 2018 he was going to solve the problem for us. And now, they've even got a new designer drug, nitazene. I don't know if you've heard of this.

I have. It's five times more powerful than fentanyl. It all comes from China. So that's got to be dealt with. But--

Within the context of trade talks.

Within the context of trade talks. But the big picture here, I think what I can add today is, we are doing something-- the president is doing something that's absolutely incredible. He's completely, in six months, restructuring the entire international trade order that's been screwing Americans since it started back in the '70s. It's just-- it's unbelievable what we're doing. You look at every trade deal that we've done, every trade deal that's being negotiated. We are going to be in such a better place. We're going to dramatically reduce our trade deficit, which means we don't transfer wealth, which means we have more jobs. We have more factories. We're going to be able to work with these countries in a much more way. I mean, we never had a farm trade deficit until about-- I don't know-- six to eight years ago. And now, it's like, too much. Our farmers are getting killed. Our fishermen are getting killed. That's why market access with the EU, with Japan, with South Korea, with other countries, is so important. And the difficulty here, but the beauty of it is that every country is like fingerprints. They're all different in different ways. So we have-- the trade direct-- Jamieson Greer is really good at this. We have a template that we go in, cross about seven verticals. It's like, what are their tariffs? What are their non-tariff barriers? Do they engage in digital taxes? Do they have a VAT tax? Or what are they doing on things like fentanyl or other things that they can help us out with? And based on that, they go in, negotiate a deal. It goes to the president. Nothing ever gets done without his approval. And we are in such a better place. I mean, that Japan deal, if you look at that, I mean, we're getting like 3/4 of a trillion dollars of free money that's going to come in and be used to invest-- this is the kicker here-- in all of the things that we are vulnerable internationally with our supply chain. In other words, that money is going to help us resolve a lot of our supply chain vulnerabilities, which both cause us strategic problems, but also create inflation, as we learned in the pandemic. You're going to stay for our second segment-- Sure. --so we're going to continue this conversation. But before we go to break, how much does resolving the question about the future of TikTok and American ownership factor into a final negotiated trade deal with China? I'm totally removed from that one, so I can't provide any insight.

So to your knowledge-- Zero insight. --you don't know if they're even connected?

Zero insight on that one. Very good. The president talked about 25% tariff against India today. Let me tell you what the problem with India is. Apropos of this, every country is like fingerprints. I call India the maharaja of tariffs. Whereas Japan was the king of non-tariff barriers, the things that you do to block us going into their markets, India is just-- they have the highest tariffs in the world. And they just won't lower them. And the reason why we have-- when we have trouble with a country, negotiating with them, they don't want to give up a good thing. The other thing that's annoying to the president is that we sell-- we have a lot of arms sales to our allies. We love arms sales. I did a lot of that. I was point on a lot of arms sales in the first term. You get two things going there. It's like, when you sell an F-16 somewhere, you don't have to send troops over there. Plus, we get jobs. India buys all their crap from Russia, OK? The president wants to change that. Peter Navarro, we'll continue that line of conversation when we come back for our second segment of the evening with Peter Navarro.