{"id":3340,"date":"2026-07-15T06:07:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T06:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3340"},"modified":"2026-07-15T06:07:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T06:07:35","slug":"economists-tear-apart-peter-navarros-national-security-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3340","title":{"rendered":"Economists tear apart Peter Navarro’s ‘national security’ argument"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

One of President Donald Trump\u2019s top economist advisers defended the administration\u2019s handouts to rare earth elements corporations \u2014 and, speaking exclusively with AlterNet, two top economists tore apart the economist\u2019s logic.<\/p>\n

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\u201cChina is using its control over the supply chain for rare-earth and other critical minerals to dominate global commerce and project state power\u2014and the world is finally waking up to the danger,\u201d Peter Navarro, who served as Senior Counselor to the President for Trade and Manufacturing, wrote for The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Navarro added, \u201cFor decades, Beijing has pursued industrial dominance through state subsidies, currency manipulation, intellectual-property theft, forced technology transfer, state-directed overcapacity, blocked market access, dumping, forced labor and lax environmental standards. Its economic aggression has advanced across industries\u2014steel and aluminum, shipbuilding, solar panels, batteries, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, telecommunications equipment, drones, robots, machine tools and advanced electronics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conservative economist then described China\u2019s recent investments in rare earth exploration and development as a dangerous economic escalation, and accused them of deliberately stagnating mineral access to other countries through a strategy of \u201cstarve, not strangle.\u201d From there, he advocated America\u2019s Defense Department providing assistance to rare earth element companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsider the Pentagon-guided effort involving ReElement Technologies, Vulcan Elements and key leaders in the defense industrial base,\u201d Navarro wrote. \u201cThe Pentagon has supported Vulcan and ReElement construction projects with hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. The Pentagon on Monday announced an additional $25 million investment in ReElement \u2018to expand domestic refining capacity for rare earth elements and other defense-critical minerals.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Comparing the Pentagon\u2019s work with rare earth companies with their various business collaborations during the COVID-19 pandemic, Navarro admitted that \u201ccritical-minerals supply chains are far more complex than ventilators. Yet the industrial lesson is the same: When government identifies the strategic gap, removes obstacles and matches innovators with industrial partners, America can move quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, Navarro characterized China\u2019s rare earth elements policy as an attempt to \u201cbully the West\u201d but claimed that it has failed because it has instead managed to \u201cencourage the free world\u2019s decoupling from the Chinese economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He concluded his argument by saying, \u201cChina built its leverage by making the world believe it was the sole supplier. America\u2019s task is to work with our free-world allies to make sure there is an alternative\u2014cleaner, cheaper and faster. America\u2019s formula is to back breakthrough technologies, pair small innovators with large industrial partners and scale China-free strategic supply chains at the Pentagon\u2019s \u2018speed of relevance\u2019\u2014fast enough to gain a competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking exclusively with AlterNet, Dr. Richard Wolff \u2014 economist emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst \u2014 characterized Navarro\u2019s argument as part and parcel of his larger anti-China agenda.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeter Navarro has a lifelong history of being hostile to everything that the Chinese economy has accomplished,\u201d Wolff told AlterNet. \u201cI’m not surprised in the slightest that he would find some way to comfort everybody about the fact that the Chinese are able, by virtue of the spectacular economic growth they have achieved in the last 40 years \u2014 every one of which, the rate of growth of China has exceeded that of the United States \u2014 to do this. The result of that was that the United States tried at every turn to slow down, to complicate, to make difficult China’s growth. And what the Chinese were looking for is a way to push back and to stop the United States from doing that. The control of the rare earths, which they didn’t use to limit the way they do now, is a way for them to push back.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that China did this not out of preference, but \u201cbecause there are very few options for them to do that. So yes, you can berate them all you want, but in the end, it is a decision of the United States not to sit down with China and work out how you cohabit on a planet when you are the two leading economies. The effort of the United States has been to hold back and limit China, and that has led the Chinese to have to defend themselves. And the rare earths issue is just part of that story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolff concluded, \u201cI can assure Mr. Navarro \u2014 and if he weren’t so anti-Chinese in his orientation, he would’ve figured this out \u2014 that there are many ways the Chinese can push back. If they can’t use rare earths, if America can produce them, they will find other ways. The problem here is not rare earths, and the problem here is not, quote unquote, a \u2018Chinese chokehold.\u2019 The problem is an adversarial relationship, when the only rational way to deal with the spectacular growth of China is to sit down and work out cohabitation arrangements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, a former economic adviser to Democratic presidential candidates and presidents including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, was also skeptical of Navarro\u2019s arguments.<\/p>\n

\u201cRare earth minerals can be found around the world,\u201d Shapiro told AlterNet. \u201cWe’ve heard that rare earth minerals were part of the justification for Trump’s fantasy of seizing Greenland \u2014 although there are a lot of rarer minerals there, they’re under, you know, a hundred feet [of ice]. There are rare earth minerals in the United States, in Africa, in Asia. It’s kind of similar to oil: there’s plenty of oil in the world. The issue is how much it takes to extract it. The same is true of rare earth minerals.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cThe attempt to make this into a national security issue \u2014 that’s simply, what should we call it, the cover story. Whatever it is that they’re proposing to do is something they want to do. The only real issue in securing sufficient rare earth minerals is the cost \u2014 how much are you willing to pay. So, to the extent that he is trying to make a national security argument, what is it he’s actually defending?\u201d<\/p>\n

Shapiro concluded, \u201cThe pertinent issue here is not whether we’re going to be able to get rare earth minerals \u2014 of course we are. We can get them from a hundred different sources around the world. The issue is how much it costs. And the fact that Peter Navarro wants to defend the crony capitalism of this administration, in which they give huge contracts paid for by taxpayers to their friends, or to companies in which they’re invested \u2014 this is an attempt to cloak the ongoing corruption of this administration in national security. As with almost everything Peter Navarro speaks about, the argument fails.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has previously indicated that it views rare earths as a lucrative industry and a major geopolitical chess piece. A company partially owned by Trump\u2019s sons, Dominari Securities, struck a major deal for tungsten projects in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s \u2018humiliating failures\u2019 are even worse than you think: Nobel economist<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of President Donald Trump\u2019s top economist advisers defended the administration\u2019s handouts to rare earth elements corporations \u2014 and, speaking exclusively with AlterNet, two top economists tore apart the economist\u2019s logic.\u201cChina is using its control over the supply chain for rare-earth and other …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEconomists tear apart Peter Navarro's 'national security' argument - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3340\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Economists tear apart Peter Navarro's 'national security' argument - 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