Strident China critic named by Trump to lead trade office

Peter Navarro, right, talks with anchor Ed Arnold before the taping of the “Real Orange Show” at KOCE on the Goldenwest College campus in Huntington Beach, Calif. Navarro has been tapped to lead the new White House Trade Council. (Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times/TNS file)

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump on Wednesday named a strident critic of China, Peter J. Navarro, to lead a new White House office that will oversee U.S. trade and industrial policy, in the latest sign the president-elect is moving to reshape relations between the world's two largest economies.

Trump also said that billionaire investor Carl Icahn would serve as a special adviser on regulatory issues, another area in which Trump wants big changes.

The appointments reflect Trump's ambitions to increase economic growth by hammering at what he regards as critical roadblocks. He has promised to support U.S. manufacturing by reducing federal regulation and by preventing what he has described as unfair competition from Chinese manufacturers. The choices of Navarro and Icahn also show that Trump will press forward with his agenda, regardless of the criticism almost certain to come.

Navarro, the only credentialed economist in Trump's inner circle, helped to shape Trump's concerns about China through a series of jeremiads. Among them was a 2012 documentary film, "Death by China," that includes an animation of a Chinese knife stabbing a map of the United States, causing blood to run freely. He has said that China is effectively waging an economic war by subsidizing exports to the United States and impeding imports from the country. Trump has described this as "the greatest theft in the history of the world."

Icahn, a brash New York billionaire who vocally supported Trump during the campaign, made his fortune as a corporate raider, buying large stakes in corporations and demanding changes intended to increase profits for shareholders. Trump said Wednesday that Icahn, one of the nation's largest private investors, would also play a role in the selection of a new chairman for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees his activities.

Carl Icahn, the activist investor, speaks at a conference in New York, Nov. 3, 2015. (Karsten Moran/The New York Times file)

"Carl was with me from the beginning, and with his being one of the world's great businessmen, that was something I truly appreciated," Trump said in a statement. "His help on the strangling regulations that our country is faced with will be invaluable."

The appointments reinforce a basic division among Trump's economic advisers. The people he has chosen to oversee trade policy, Navarro and Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor, both favor increased trade restrictions. But Trump's broader circle of advisers is dominated by proponents of free trade, including Icahn; Gary D. Cohn, who will lead the National Economic Council; Rex Tillerson, tapped for secretary of state; and Terry Branstad, Trump's choice for ambassador to China. Trump is also considering the appointment of Larry Kudlow, a strong proponent of trade, to lead his Council of Economic Advisers.

They also open Trump to additional criticism that the wealth and the business backgrounds of his appointees further open the administration to conflicts of interest.

Icahn will "be in charge of overseeing regulatory overhauls while simultaneously controlling or owning stock in companies that could benefit from the changes he makes," said Eric Walker, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. "It looks like Trump isn't the only billionaire set to profit off of the presidency."