1. …For years, the U.S. has relied on the post-World War II economic system —undergirded by free trade and international institutions—to buttress its prosperity and power. It’s not hard to imagine where Navarro’s plans to scrap that system would lead. A garrison state, shorn of allies, regarded with suspicion, if not hostility, from Berlin to Beijing, is hardly a recipe for the kind of rapid rise in GDP that Trump is promising. It amounts to a flagrant repudiation of the kind of belief in free market capitalism that presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush have championed as a matter of course. This alone should be enough to give anyone with a stake in the world economy —which these days is pretty much everyone—the collywobbles. Trump should shun his advice. If he follows Navarro’s little schemes, it could rapidly lead to a world crisis. Watch this man. 2. Peter Navarro is "a zero-sum economist, who, like Trump, believes that every item not made in the US represents the theft of an American job". Navarro's twisted economics can be debunked by the "Shylook" analogy: A guy by the name of Shylook regretted buying some vegetables and a frozen chicken from a convenience store one day. He opined that he could save a lot of money if he grew vegetables and reared chickens in his backyard instead. The more he regretted his purchase, the more he got angry with the store owner for “stealing” his money and farming job. On the other hand, the store owner named Lookshy felt frustrated for not being able to charge higher prices for his wares. He regarded all his customers as thieves for failing to pay him “fair prices”. He always muttered: "What they don't steal from me, they buy away from me." Isn’t it an outrage to be regarded as a thief whenever one buys or sells anything? In the end, who is stealing from whom?
