A Fake Expert. A Book Cover. An Amazon Search. That’S It. That’S How We Got Here.
4/9/25
@RetroAgent12: How did we get here? Donald Trump tanked the economy based on a book his son-in-law found on Amazon.
He told Jared Kushner to find him an economic advisor—someone who could make him “look tough” and talk tough on China. Jared searched Amazon, saw a book called Death by China, and thought the title was “cool.” So he cold-called the author, Peter Navarro, and gave him a job.
Navarro had no real economic credibility—just an obsession with tariffs and a made-up expert named “Ron Vara” whom he cited repeatedly in his books. Who’s Ron Vara? A fictional economist Navarro invented. It’s an anagram of his own name.
This is not a joke. This is literally how the Trump administration created its trade policy—one that wiped out $11 trillion in wealth, crashed markets, and is nearly sending the world into another Great Depression.
A fake expert. A book cover. An Amazon search. That’s it. That’s how we got here.