President Donald Trump‘s senior trade and manufacturing advisor Peter Navarro — who spent four months incarcerated for ignoring a congressional subpoena to testify about the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — lost his cool outside of the White House when asked about the President’s decision to reverse his 50 percent threatened tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum.
As seen in the video below shared by USA Today White House correspondent Joey Garrison, Navarro told a reporter from Sky News UK that “the president is negotiating strategically. So stop with the rhetoric. Okay? Just stop that crap.”
When the reporter followed up and said, “But he does seem to be changing his mind all the time,” Navarro, who accused the reporter of “hectoring” him, replied again: “Stop that crap! That’s a bunch of crap.”
A testy exchange between Peter Navarro and a Sky News reporter over tariff policy. Navarro was annoyed with how closely the reporter was filming with his phone. pic.twitter.com/I2IwbsxsKu
— Joey Garrison (@joeygarrison) March 11, 2025
The reporter continued to push back and said Trump’s tariffs are “causing havoc to the stock markets,” to which Navarro replied, “It’s not causing havoc.”
On CNBC, with the stock ticker showing the Dow, Nasdaq Composite, and S&P down, Navarro used similar language regarding the U.S.-Canadian trade negotiations. He said: “I would just ask my friends in Canada to, let’s let’s tamp down the rhetoric.”
Peter Navarro asks Canada to tone down the rhetoric pic.twitter.com/JeWBKkj795
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 11, 2025
Note: On Fox News this week, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who is scheduled to meet with Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Thursday in Washington, said he’s planning on having a “nice conversation” with Ford.
Lutnick said of his upcoming meeting that he will “lower the temperature” and said of Ford, while pantomiming boxing fists: “He thought he’d be sort of the big man and tackle Donald Trump but you know you can’t tackle Donald Trump.” Lutnick added that Trump “won’t let someone push him around.”