The White House’s Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s top trade adviser, appeared on CNBC this week and tried to argue that the president’s trade tariffs should be seen as “tax cuts.”

That was, of course, utterly absurd. In fact, CNBC’s Sara Eisen quickly reminded her guest, “Many economists would say they are tax hikes because ultimately a consumer will pay for some of those increased prices.” Navarro was incredulous.

“Most economists just don’t agree with us,” he responded, referring to himself and his administration colleagues. Navarro soon after added, “Who has credibility here? The Trump administration or ‘the economists’?”

This appeared to be a rhetorical question, as if the answer were a foregone conclusion. But if Navarro is actually interested in knowing who has more credibility, there’s a perfectly good answer that’s readily available.

Broadly speaking there are a couple of elements to keep in mind. The first is that Team Trump’s track record on economic policy is abysmal. In the president’s first term, he vowed to deliver record job growth, economic growth with no modern precedent and revenue gains that move the federal budget close to balance. None of that happened.

In the Republican’s second term, after Trump inherited amazing economic conditions from Joe Biden, the consensus among economists was that the White House’s trade policies would undermine labor markets, push inflation higher and slow U.S. economic growth. Those predictions have held up quite well: In recent months, job growth in the U.S. has slowed to a 16-year low; stubborn inflation rates are inching higher, not lower; and U.S. economic growth has been sluggish in 2025.

As Paul Krugman explained in his latest Substack column, “[W]hat is driving Trump crazy is the growing evidence that mainstream economists were right.”

If Navarro is interested in knowing “who has credibility here,” I think the answer is simple: It’s the folks who were right, not wrong.

As for Navarro’s personal credibility, let’s take a brief stroll down memory lane.

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As longtime readers might recall, in 2016, then-candidate Trump directed Jared Kushner to help bolster his views on China. The son-in-law went to Amazon.com, was impressed by the title of a book Navarro wrote, and cold-called him. Navarro joined Team Trump as an economic adviser soon after.

In the years that followed, Navarro became a strange political voice on the Republican’s White House team. In early 2020, for reasons that went unexplained, Trump tapped Navarro to serve on the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, where he earned a reputation for picking strange fights in the Situation Room over hydroxychloroquine.

Last year, Navarro also went to prison after having been convicted of contempt of Congress. (He defied a federal subpoena and refused to testify about his role in trying to help overturn the results of the 2020 election.)

Just as notable is the fake expert Navarro concocted named “Ron Vara.” Remember this 2019 report from The New York Times?

Ron Vara has appeared as a cryptic voice of economic wisdom more than a dozen times in five of Mr. Navarro’s 13 books. … But Ron Vara, it turns out, does not exist. At least not in corporeal form. He is apparently a figment of Mr. Navarro’s imagination — an anagram of Mr. Navarro’s surname that the trade adviser created as a Hitchcockian writing device and stuck with as something of an inside joke with himself.

Yes, the ex-con who repeatedly cited a fake expert asked a national television audience whether he and his colleagues have more “credibility” than the consensus views of mainstream economists. Navarro acted as if the answer were obvious.

Oddly, I think it’s obvious, too.