Press Briefing: Peter Navarro Speaks to Reporters Outside the White House - October 6, 2026

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[In progress] -- in a bunch of factories, and to do that, we have to import some of this foreign equipment in order to do that. And, and that's the seed corn down the road of manufacturing jobs, higher wages, productivity, and, yes, a much lower trade deficit. So, that's the good thing. At the same time, the stuff we don't want to be buying, the foreign consumer goods, which are highly-subsidized by countries like China, that's going down.

And we're seeing in the data, today, that the trade deficit with China, India, Japan, uh, and the European Union, all entities which cheat the hell out of us, that's going down. So, that's good news. Uh, the one thing I wanna flag for you in the data is we're seeing, uh, our deficit go up with a certain, certain amount of countries, uh, that include Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico.

Um, there's a report that I call the Great Transshipment Scam, uh, that's up on, uh, the White House site, and my site, peternavarro.com. It describes how China, to evade the tariffs, goes around to get into America, and they go through countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and Mexico. And we're cracking down on that great transshipment scam.

So, we're, we're kind of handling, um, that aspect of it. But, the, but we're also seeing South Korea, in particular, I wanna call them out today, because they are inundating this country, um, with highly-subsidized steel by their country, and transship steel with China. Um, even though we have very high tariffs, 50% on steel, they're blowing past that, because they cheat, um, and we're gonna be doing something about that.

So, all-in-all, pretty good, um, report today when you look, uh, beneath the surface. Uh, and that's all I got for you. Thank you.