This phrase is at the heart of the free trade lexicon. Free trade in goods or services, unencumbered by tariffs or other barriers, is likely to result in greater total output than if there were no trade. Specialization makes economic sense: not every country needs to grow its own peppers. (A few years ago, Navarro called this “one of the deepest truths in all of economics.” Now he talks about “the so-called gains from trade.”)
At Cambridge, Navarro had to write a dissertation on the economics of corporate charitable giving. Dubin needed to pay rent. (“I was a poor student, and he was renovating a triplex on Central Square.”) Money changed hands. “He told me what direction he wanted to go in, and I helped him get there theoretically and empirically,” Dubin said. “I could use his data to create models and make it work. And then at some point he took over and it became his own.” Dubin, half-seriously, described it as “one of my first consulting experiences.” He noted that “most people at this level wouldn’t pay someone to help.” But Navarro did not see anything reprehensible in the exchange, nor did Dubin.
The two men become close friends. “We went to the Cape together,” Dubin said. “We met twice.” They also co-authored several articles. Dubin recalls that Navarro, who was “very conscious of his health and body,” was an enthusiast of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a sticky, unregulated byproduct of the paper industry that supposedly soothes muscle tension. According to Dubin, Navarro was not immune to the substance's notorious side effects: “It made him smell like garlic.” (Navarro told me that today he “doesn't drink, smoke weed, do hard drugs or even prescription drugs,” adding, “It's just not my thing. Live clean or die.”)
Navarro's dissertation, submitted in 1986, does not acknowledge Dubin's contributions. According to every economist I asked, such an omission constitutes an academic violation. Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, told me that if someone is “really developing models for it, I think that's crossing the line.” Holzer, who served as the Labor Department's chief economist during the Clinton administration, is a former Harvard acquaintance of Navarro's. “At a minimum, a footnote acknowledging the person’s contribution is appropriate,” Holzer said.
Lawrence Goulder, the only surviving member of Navarro's dissertation committee, agrees. If Navarro had received significant assistance, he told me, some recognition of that assistance would be “expected” and the absence of it would be “inappropriate.” (Goulder, now a Stanford student, noted that Navarro taught him how to windsurf at Harvard.)
Navarro, when asked whether he had engaged in academic fraud, responded about Dubin: “I do not remember him providing any significant assistance in writing my dissertation.” Navarro also pointed to other posts in which he thanked Dubin for his help.
Later, Peter Navarro introduced readers of his books to a friend named Ron Vara. According to If It Rains in Brazil, Buy Starbucks, a 2001 financial advice book that urges retail investors to stay alert to world events, Vara was a captain in a reserve unit during the Gulf War. Now living on a houseboat in Miami, he was known as the Dark Prince of Disaster for creating “macro spectacles”—professions that cleverly capitalized on sudden onsets of human misery. Vara played macro for Hurricane Andrew and the Taiwan earthquake. In 1986, when Vara was a “struggling economics doctoral student at Harvard,” he was apparently clairvoyant: two days before the Chernobyl disaster, he shorted the positions of companies investing in nuclear energy.
Vara appears in several of Navarro's other books, including Death by China, where he is quoted as saying, “Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a crib into a deadly weapon, and a cell phone battery into heart-rending shrapnel.” Vara also served as executive producer (and music director) for videos Navarro showed in his Rising China class at the University of California, Irvine.
