A senior White House trade adviser absolutely went off on a Newsmax host for suggesting Donald Trump’s newly-imposed tariffs against Mexico and Canada effectively amount to an act of economic warfare.
Speaking with network anchor John Glasgow on Sunday morning, Peter Navarro came down hard on Glasgow describing the recent measures exactly as they are, and as they have indeed been received by the nation’s southern and northern neighbors.
“I want to get your reaction here, Prime Minister Trudeau pushing back. I mean, he only has a few weeks left in office, he’s likely gonna get voted out. But I mean, it’s a pretty firm stance here from Canada, as well as Mexico, saying ‘this 25 percent tariff, we’re not gonna take it, we’re gonna send one right back at you’.”
Navarro quickly shot back, “It’s interesting to hear Trudeau talk about pain to the Canadian people. Hey, memo to Canada, we’ve had half a million Americans die from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that come across your border, come across the Mexican border, and start as the fruit of the poisonous tree in China. President Trump promised to stop this carnage, and he’s going to do it.”
Last year, U.S. border patrol intercepted roughly 9,600 kilograms of fentanyl coming into the country across the southern border, as per the New York Times. For Canada, that number stood at just 19 kilograms, or 1% of the amount from Mexico.
Mindful of these inconvenient details, Glasgow pushed Navarro further on Trump’s new tariffs, asking, “But my question is, does a bigger trade–call it a war–does that help or hurt the American people.”
“Don’t call it a war!” Navarro blasted back. “This is not a trade war! That’s the rhetoric of the globalists who want to send our jobs offshore and our factories offshore.”
He later also claimed that a single cup of fentanyl “can kill millions of people,” only slightly wide of the mark set by the DEA itself, given the agency claims it’d actually take more than a kilogram to cause the deaths of even half that number.
Notwithstanding the facts, Navarro chose to round off his interview with further threats to the Canadian prime minister, remarking “enough came over last year to kill 10 million Americans, Mr Trudeau, from Canada.”
