Matt Coker | Posted on January 31, 2019
Two electric-bicycle companies that are about 9 miles apart—around 8 miles if you are riding the San Diego Creek Trail between Fountain Valley’s Pedego and Newport Beach’s the Electric Bike Company—need only look to UC Irvine for the source of their woes from President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
Orange County’s pre-eminent institution of higher learning was the launching pad for Peter Navarro, the UCI Paul Merage School of Business professor emeritus in economics/public policy who is (dis)credited with putting the bug in Trump’s ear before the president ordered steel and aluminum tariffs on March 8, 2018.
Navarro first began advising Trump before the 2016 presidential election, which at the time seemed unlikely given the professor’s own runs for offices in the 1990s in the San Diego area. In those days, Navarro was a pro-environment, pro-slow-growth Democrat for mayor, city council, county supervisor and Congress (as the “Democrat Newt Gingrich Fears the Most!”). But Navarro lost each race.
Read the whole article at OCWeekly.com >>
