Trump Adviser Says Latest Bad Economic Data Is Actually Good ‘When You Strip out’ Negative Effects of Tariffs: ‘It’s Working Beautifully’

TRANSCRIPT:

NAVARRO: "One thing about today’s news. That’s the best negative print I’ve ever seen in my life. And the markets need to, like, look beneath the surface of that. We had a 22% increase in domestic investment. That is off the charts when you strip out inventories and the negative effects that we're surging imports because of the tariffs. You had three percent growth, so we really like where we’re at now. With respect to China, look, Jim, we know that China cheats us. We know that we use tariffs to defend ourselves against that cheating. And what we’re trying to do with China, as well as the rest of the world, get the tariff barriers down, get the non-tariff barriers down, and we do that with the strategy we're adopting. And I think it’s working beautifully. We had — I mean, they’re taking numbers, you know, it's like you gotta go in and get a number now to get a meeting with USTR, the United States trade representative, in order to to make a deal. So, all that’s going to be great, so let’s see what happens there."
 

(Via Mediaite)