The Untold Origin of Trump’s Tariff Obsession: Peter Navarro’s Fake Expert and the Global Economic Meltdown

What if the most destructive economic policy in modern American history started… with a book title on Amazon?
This book doesn’t just expose the absurdity of Donald Trump’s tariff policy. It uncovers the bizarre, little-known origin of the entire trade war—an origin that begins not in the halls of power or the depths of economic theory, but in a random search on Amazon.com. At the heart of the chaos stands Peter Navarro, the rogue economist behind Trump’s most reckless ideas, and the author of Death by China, the book that caught Jared Kushner’s eye during the 2016 campaign. Navarro wasn’t chosen for his credentials—he was chosen for his book title.
But the madness doesn’t stop there. In The Untold Origin of Trump’s Tariff Obsession, Wyatt Perkins unravels the story of Ron Vara, the fake expert Navarro invented to validate his own theories. Yes—fake. Cited in book after book, this fictional economist was nothing but an anagram of Navarro’s name. And yet, his ghost shaped real policy. Policy that led to soaring prices, international retaliation, market panic, and a growing economic collapse.
This is not a traditional political biography. It’s a true story of how fake expertise, populist rage, and one man’s obsession with trade deficits spiraled into global disaster. It’s the story of a government that chose fiction over fact, slogans over systems, and fantasy over economics. You’ll discover how Navarro bypassed experts, buried dissent, and built a doctrine of tariffs that had no basis in reality—but fit perfectly on a campaign hat.
Featuring deep research, brutal narrative, and a tone as furious as the markets themselves, The Untold Origin of Trump’s Tariff Obsession is part exposé, part political thriller, part economic horror story. If you’ve ever wondered how the Trump tariff disaster really began, and why America’s trade war felt more like a joke than a strategy, this book delivers the answer—unfiltered, unforgiving, and unforgettable.
Trump followed a lie. Navarro wrote it. Ron Vara never existed. But the consequences are all too real.