Peter Navarro on America's Manufacturing Comeback and the Fauci Controversy

Sean Hannity (0:00)

Look, I understand that there is a lag period.

The amount of money that he's been able to secure for manufacturing in this country is unprecedented. Somewhere between 15 and 18 trillion dollars, unheard of, I think Biden brought in less than a trillion in four years, and that is money to build semiconductor chips, pharmaceutical manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, things that Barack Obama said was never going to come back to this country. So all of this combined means that the best is yet to come. It doesn't mean that all of you right now are quite feeling it. There is a lag time. That is unfortunate. Did that factor into the elections? You know, I have to assume that it probably did to some level, on some level. But anyway, here to really, really explain it to you, because I think understanding it will give you the hope and the confidence, not a fantasy here. This is real economic policy. It's Peter Navarro, senior counselor to the president for trade, author of the new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, a love and lawfare story in Trump land, quite appropriate considering we're now hitting another area of lawfare at a level that's unprecedented.

And he has a new book coming out about Anthony Fauci and the case against the godfather of the pandemic, and we'll get to that with him as well. We have a lot of ground to cover with him. Peter, welcome back to the program, sir. Thank you for being with us.

Peter Navarro (1:41)

Just always a pleasure to be with you, Sean. And I am happy to report that we are in the midst of the greatest manufacturing renaissance of the post-World War II boom. And it begins with the president's tariffs, which are supported by the tax cuts for factories built in America. And you have, in addition to the tariffs as part of the Trumpnomics, you have the lower regulatory costs.

And, of course, we are now the largest petroleum producer in the world. So a combination of that, and, yeah, I'm the director of trade manufacturing. I'm here right now at the White House, and it's buzzing here. I mean, it's moving. The latest October jobs report was a blowout. It beat expectations by 100,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.2 to 4.1 percent. But even more important, Sean, the labor force participation rates was up. People are coming back into the workforce. Factories added close to 20,000 jobs in October alone were well over 100,000. And Sean, going back to 2016, when I first joined the Trump campaign, we've always believed that manufacturing is the key to both prosperity and security. It's prosperity because the manufacturing jobs themselves, the blue collar jobs, pay the good wages, and then they create five and ten more jobs throughout the community writ large.

And then from a security point of view, I mean, we've learned the hard way in the pandemic. We are learning the hard way now with the rare earth, Sean, that China in particular wants to weaponize their supply chains. And if the supply chains are there instead of here, we are subject to their blackmail. So, I'm...

Sean Hannity (3:46)

You know, but Peter, I don't want to gloss over what you're saying about manufacturing, because when you bring up back, look, first of all, we should never have been dependent on pharmaceuticals from foreign countries, number one. Number two, the same thing goes for semiconductor chips. The idea that we outsourced automobile manufacturing, and Obama said it's never coming back, is infuriating to me, because these are all high-paying career jobs for the people that truly make this country great, the working men and women of America.

Peter Navarro (4:19)

I mean, the rare earth story is fascinating. We used to have this company called MagnaQuench, Sean, and it made the rare earth magnets. And why did it make it? It was in Indiana. It made it because General Motors needs the rare earth magnets for a lot of the parts in a car. And it was back in the 80s, when all the magnets were made with cobalt.

And Zaire was like on fire and like prices were, so GM to its credit invented these rare earth magnets. See, the next thing we know, China comes in and buys the damn company, literally puts the factory in crates, ships it off to Tianjin. And then we had a mine here, Mountain Compass in California, and they shut that down.

And the next thing we know, they got literally a knife to our throat, saying, if you want rare earths, you got to do this, that and the other thing, Sean. So I think this is on us, and I'm not saying the Trump administration, I'm saying the people who were here before us, they approved those deals. So, yeah, it's pharmaceuticals, it's rare earths, it's steel, aluminum, copper, all sorts of critical minerals. And what we're doing, Sean, very forward-looking, with Lutnick at Commerce and his Section 232 tariffs and with Jameson Greer at the USTR with his Section 301 tariffs, we are basically bringing our supply chains home with tariffs. And it's unbelievable. I just issued a report, it's on the White House website on the manufacturing renaissance. And since the boss took office, 500 new investments, more than 380 billion in manufacturing plants, over 160,000 new manufacturing jobs announced, more than 300,000 new direct and indirect jobs. It's across this country, and there isn't a single data center that I counted in any event. This is real stuff spread across nine individual sectors. And as we speak, you know, my job is to make sure that when China threatens us, that we have the best of production so that we don't have to get on our knees to China.