Trump picks China critic to head new White House trade council

Peter Navarro, an outspoken critic of China and U.S. trade policy who advised President-elect Donald Trump during his campaign, will lead a newly established National Trade Council in the White House.  Navarro's criticism of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other aspects of trade policy is in line with Trump's nominee for commerce secretary, private-equity investor Wilbur Ross, who a transition spokesman said this week would play a major role in directing Trump's trade agenda.  Navarro, who teaches economics at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of “Death by China,” a book strongly critical of the Asian nation. The former Democrat ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1996 and spoke at the Democratic national convention that year.  In a joint Wall Street Journal op-ed on Oct. 25, Navarro and Ross pushed back at critics of Trump's trade policy who said he was risking a trade war. “This is an alarmist misread of the bargaining table in trade negotiations. "Most of America's $766 billion annual trade deficit in goods is with a few countries, all of which need our markets far more than we need theirs, including China, Germany, Japan, Mexico and South Korea.”