<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59a6f8786eac40d11c8b66b8-1778/ap17242566467782.jpg" alt="Donald Trump" data-mce-source="AP" data-mce-caption="President Donald Trump" /><p class="source"><span>AP</span></p><p class="caption">President Donald Trump</p></div><p></p></div></div>President Trump's tax reform speech Wednesday will be "light on substance, heavy on populism," <a href="https://www.axios.com/trumps-tax-speech-light-on-substance-heavy-on-populism-2479335126.html?utm_medium=linkshare&amp;utm_campaign=organic" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Axios reports</a>.</p><p>Tax reform presents Republicans with extremely similar traps to the ones they did not see coming on healthcare.</p><p>In particular, a White House official told Axios the president will call to end "the special interest loopholes that have only benefited the wealthy and powerful few" so the president can pay for tax cuts.</p><p>That sounds good in the abstract. So did "insurance for everyone" that is "much less expensive and much better."</p><p>We shouldn't forget he made a populist sale of his healthcare plan, too - and it stopped working once Congress started having to put detail of the plan into legislative text.</p><h2>Another populist promise that can't be met</h2><p>What does the president mean by "special interest loopholes" that he can close to pay for tax cuts? </p><p>"Among possible deductions that the White House could support eliminating are those for the use of electric cars, historic preservation and fashioning a ranch into a cattle-breeding facility," <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/29/trump-tax-overhaul-populism-242134" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Politico reports</a>.</p><p>Of course, those deductions are tiny and scrapping them would barely raise any revenue for cutting rates.</p><p>If a deduction is big enough to matter, it will have a powerful lobby fighting to keep it. And if the deduction is in the individual tax code, a lot of regular taxpayers who use it will bristle at the idea that they are a "special interest" or among "the wealthy and powerful few."</p><p>In April, top White House adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin talked about eliminating all itemized deductions in the personal income tax except those for mortgage interest and charitable deductions. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59a6f48e79bbfda03f8b4b0a-599/screenshot2017-03-17at101943am.png" alt="screen_shot_2017 03 17_at_10.19.43_am" data-mce-source="Tax Policy Center" /><p class="source"><span>Tax Policy Center</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>So who would lose out if these deductions get eliminated? What "special interests" get their oxen gored under this proposal? Well, let's look at <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-largest-tax-expenditures" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this handy table from the Tax Policy Center</a> that outlines the 13 largest federal tax expenditures for 2016. (A "tax expenditure" is revenue the federal government foregoes by choosing not to tax a certain kind of income, or taxing it at a preferential rate.)</p><p>This list underscores the surprisingly narrow scope even of the White House's opening bid on tax reform, before the special interests swarm in to protect the deductions they use. Amazingly, at least 11 of the 13 items on TPC's list would be untouched by Mnuchin and Cohn's proposal.</p><h2>Almost nothing is on the table</h2><p>One tax preference that could be affected is No. 13 on TPC's list, at $50 billion a year: accelerated depreciation of machinery and equipment. But if this tax expenditure is repealed, the proceeds won't go into individual income tax cuts.</p><p>This is a business tax deduction, and it's currently being hashed out among Republicans in Congress who will figure out the trade-off between encouraging capital investments by businesses by retaining or expanding tax preferences like these, and cutting business tax rates overall.</p><p>The only large individual income tax provision on the chopping block is No. 9, the $63 billion deduction for state and local taxes paid. A related, and smaller, deduction for property taxes on owner-occupied homes could also go.</p><p>Repealing these deductions is attractive to some Republicans because they are seen as encouraging states to raise taxes, and their benefits go disproportionately to high-income residents of high-tax blue states like California, New Jersey and New York.</p><p>But the idea won't be attractive to affluent taxpayers in those states - or to the Republicans who represent many of those taxpayers in the House of Representatives. Many of the most vulnerable seats House Republicans will have to defend in 2018 are in places like Orange County, California, or affluent suburban areas of New Jersey.</p><p>Eliminating the deduction for property taxes paid would hurt taxpayers in jurisdictions with high property taxes like New Jersey and Long Island. And it would draw opposition from the same lobbies, like realtors, that fiercely defend the mortgage interest deduction.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59386b5bd508f81e008b4d7c-1024/gettyimages-109479335.jpg" alt="Obama" data-mce-source="Getty/Pool" /><p class="source"><span>Getty/Pool</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Sort-of-rich people will not like it if you come for their tax breaks</h2><p>Affluent people - say, those with family incomes between $100,000 and $300,000 - have disproportionate influence in tax policy debates, even greater than the influence of the very rich. This is because America has one political party interested in raising taxes on people who make more than $300,000, and no political parties interested in raising taxes on people who make less than $300,000.</p><p>In recent years, the Affordable Care Act and bipartisan tax negotiations in late 2012 have led to large increases in tax rates on high salaries and capital income, making the tax code significantly more progressive. But efforts to cut back tax preferences for the merely affluent have gone nowhere - notably including President Barack Obama's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/politics/obama-will-drop-proposal-to-end-529-college-savings-plans.html?mcubz=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">much-hated proposal</a> to curtail tax-preferred 529 college-saving plans.</p><p>These plans mostly benefit affluent families, and Obama wanted to replace them with college subsidies targeted to people with low incomes. The merely affluent class - which includes lots of influential Washington and New York-based editors and reporters, not to mention members of Congress themselves - hated this idea, and it died fast.</p><p>Trump and Republicans in Congress may argue abolishing the state and local tax deduction would be more than offset by cuts in income tax rates. But even if this is true, people who currently use these deductions would be losers relative to those who wouldn't use the deductions and would still get the rate cuts.</p><p>And the messaging for Republicans will be hard, having to convince people they wouldn't miss deductions they currently use.</p><p>For all these reasons, Ronald Reagan <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-04/even-reagan-couldn-t-kill-this-tax-deduction" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">tried to abolish the state and local tax deduction in the 1980s and failed</a>, in large part due to opposition from blue-state Republicans. Trump's legislative-affairs skills are poor compared to Reagan's.</p><h2>Even a tax-cuts-only approach is fraught</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59a6f8b06eac40d82b8b571d-711/trump-to-begin-tax-reform-push-next-week-financial-times-reports-2017-8.jpg" alt="FILE PHOTO: Director of the White House National Economic Council Gary Cohn arrives prior to U.S. President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts " data-mce-source="Thomson Reuters" data-mce-caption="FILE PHOTO: Director of the White House National Economic Council Cohn arrives prior to U.S. President Donald Trump announced decision on the Paris Climate Agreement at the White House in Washington" /><p class="source"><span>Thomson Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Director of the White House National Economic Council Cohn</p></div><p></p></div></div>Of course, Trump keeps talking about "big tax cuts and tax reform," and he can always drop the second part. He'll likely be left with a bill that cuts tax rates and eliminates a few minor tax deductions, like one for converting a ranch into a cattle-breeding facility.</p><p>Whether that bill could be sold as "populist" would depend on which taxes it cuts. In 2001, Republicans addressed the <keyword id="6358883" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="politics">politics</keyword> of taxes by making big cuts across the board: an expanded child credit for low and moderate earners, a new lower tax bracket at the bottom, plus cuts in regular and capital income tax rates for those at the top.</p><p>But George W. Bush had big projected surpluses to work with.</p><p>With a smaller tax-cutting budget available, and with little revenue available from closing "special interest loopholes" despite Trump's rhetoric, Republicans will have to choose among tax benefits for four groups:</p><ul><li>The middle-income Americans Trump likes to talk about benefitting;</li><li>The politically influential and noisy affluent class that cares deeply about its existing tax breaks;</li><li>The wealthiest, who fund the Republican Party and are expecting tax cuts on capital income;</li><li>Corporations, which of course are disproportionately owned by the wealthiest.</li></ul><p>As with healthcare, selling this plan as "populist" once the likely details are filled in and there is legislation to pass will be much more difficult than doing so when the plan is merely some talking points.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-tell-solar-eclipse-ruined-vision-permanent-damage-2017-8">Here's how to tell if the solar eclipse ruined your vision</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/gxR5uY6i-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

Tax reform is a trap for Trump - just like healthcare

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<p><div type="image" title="eubanks1" height="2000" width="3000" msid="75298881" hostid="261"></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>African Americans make up just under 40% of <keyword id="99644" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mississippi">Mississippi</keyword>'s total population, but <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2020/04/08/black-mississippians-at-greater-risk-72-of-deaths-56-of-states-covid-19-cases/">represent</a> 56% of its known COVID-19 infections and 72% of its deaths from the virus.</li><li>"The reduction in income for people during this crisis is going to hit particularly hard in Mississippi ... since a large part of the population has little or no cushion to withstand an unexpected financial shock," Hope Credit Union CEO William Bynum said.</li><li>Instead of working to improve <keyword id="6364896" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="public-health">public health</keyword> and economic outcomes for the his state's black community, Gov. Tate Reeves has, of late, chosen to honor its Confederate legacy. </li><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Directly across from a set of railroad tracks in the heart of Jackson, Mississippi, stands a brick building with a mansard roof. Built by 62-year-old Tyrone Bully, and his father, a former brick mason, it houses Bully's Restaurant, perhaps the one place in town that unites Mississippians of all races. Inside its exposed-brick walls, lined with portraits of black icons such as Medgar Evers and Barack <keyword id="16284" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Obama">Obama</keyword>, you're as likely to meet a powerful state legislator inside its walls as you are ordinary working people from the African American neighborhood that surrounds the 38-year-old restaurant.</p><p>Even before Bully's won a prestigious James Beard Foundation award, in 2016, it was no secret to the people of Jackson that its soul-food offerings — greens, macaroni and cheese, oxtails, and smothered pork chops — were without peer. While today foodies associate the cuisine with comfort and decadence, it originated from dishes African Americans made from the meager food rations available during slavery and after emancipation. Making them tasty became a byproduct of survival. Bully's, then, came to represent black survival.</p><p>On April 10, Tyrone and his wife, Greta, closed Bully's because of the COVID-19 pandemic, nine days after Gov. Tate Reeves issued a statewide stay-at-home order. Restaurant closures began slowly, first in the college town of Oxford before moving south to Jackson. While the Bully's found the closure devastating, they knew staying open would imperil their employees and customers.</p><p>The couple is lucky: Their savings will allow them to continue to pay their staff and close the business and reopen when this crisis is over. But Greta worries about their neighbors. "Black people have always done without," she told me.</p><p>Before the Bullys closed up shop, several of their neighbors showed Greta an <a href="https://archive.fo/oioB5">article</a> they saw on social media falsely claiming black people were immune to the <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword>. "The benefits of melanin (internal and external) must be considered when talking about black people resisting the coronavirus," one article said. She reminded those who shared the posts that COVID-19 did not discriminate on the basis of color.</p><p>While African Americans make up slightly less than 40% of Mississippi's total population, they <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2020/04/08/black-mississippians-at-greater-risk-72-of-deaths-56-of-states-covid-19-cases/">represent</a> 56% of its known COVID-19 infections and 72% of its deaths from the virus. In a state where black residents already face dire health outcomes, the unprecedented pandemic will only further devastate its most vulnerable citizens.</p><p>Outside of Jackson, Mississippi is largely a rural state, where for some the closest hospital is 20 miles away. Combine this pandemic with unequal access to healthcare and existing poor health outcomes for the state's black population, and the approaching disaster becomes clear. <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2020/04/07/coronavirus-is-a-gendered-crisis-in-mississippi-as-the-pandemic-rocks-woman-dominated-professions/">Black women</a> also fill most of the state's low-wage jobs, particularly in sectors deemed essential like healthcare and food retail. This places them at higher risk for exposure than most of the population.</p><p>"What we are seeing in Mississippi can't be really fully appreciated without acknowledging the conditions that existed before the pandemic," William Bynum told me. He's the chief executive officer of the Hope Credit Union, which serves low-income communities in Mississippi and across <keyword id="1781283" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="The-South">the South</keyword>, particularly in areas with a legacy of persistent poverty.</p><p>Over half of Mississippi households don't have enough cash or liquid assets to subsist for three months if their income is interrupted, he said. The racial disparities are staggering: 7 out of 10 black households just could not withstand losing their income for three months.</p><p><div type="image" title="eubanks4" height="3965" width="5939" msid="75298888" hostid="261"></div></p><p>"The reduction in income for people during this crisis is going to hit particularly hard in Mississippi," he said, "since a large part of the population has little or no cushion to withstand an unexpected financial shock."</p><p>Across the South there is a saying that when white folks get a cold, black folks get pneumonia. Mississippi's COVID-19 crisis threatens to prove it true.</p><p>On adjacent 30-acre stretches of land, about 70 miles north of Bully's, in the Mississippi Delta, lies the West Holmes Community Development Organization, a rural farm cooperative in Holmes County, the poorest county in the state. Its origins are rooted in the New Deal-era 1930s, when Mileston was <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mississippi-growing/">established</a> as a black-run farm cooperative by the federal government.</p><p>Each year the co-op hires high-school students to plant and harvest vegetable crops on land donated by farmers in the area. In turn, local residents enrolled in the USDA Women, Infants and Children program can redeem their vouchers for organic produce. At the end of the growing season, the farmers split the proceeds with the young entrepreneurs who are part of this program.</p><p>By this time of year, 58-year-old Calvin Head, who runs the cooperative, would have typically employed 30 workers to work his fields. Each of his student workers earned about $700 a month, not a living wage but enough to supplement the income of a family living close to the poverty line. But an unusually heavy rain season has made the land too wet to plow, and the pandemic has disrupted access to seed and planting products.<strong> </strong></p><p>For Head, a perpetual optimist, the great irony is that an operation that was founded to change the dynamic in a poor community may now be in danger. "I'm not giving up, but there is so much uncertainty," Head told me over the phone from his co-op's small office. "Everything in farming is time-sensitive. We don't mind doing the hard work, but we can't even get out in the fields now."</p><p>Holmes is one of Mississippi's 82 counties experiencing persistent poverty, a federal <a href="http://www.rupri.org/Forms/Mississippi.pdf">classification</a> indicating that the poverty rate has been over 20% for more than three decades. Many of these counties have been challenged by persistent poverty dating back to the Jim Crow era. If you take a map of Mississippi showing areas of deep, entrenched poverty with regard to race exists in Mississippi, it often overlaps with the heaviest concentration of slaveholding on the eve of the Civil War. These also happen to be the same places in the state with the worst health outcomes, poor housing conditions, and regular food insecurity.</p><p>These parts of the state are also home to families saddled with crushing debt, as Bynum said. Depressed wages will increase the pressures of debt, which in turn will hammer businesses and employees of essential businesses, including healthcare and hospital workers. Average annual wages for the state's service-sector workers are already less than half that of all industries in the Deep South, and Mississippi has the largest wage gap for service workers of any Southern state. The average annual pay in the retail and hospitality sector is $17,500, compared with almost $39,000 for all industries statewide. And these jobs are largely filled by people of color, many of them women. Blacks in Mississippi earn about 69% of what whites earn at the median, among full-time, year-round workers.</p><p>The safety net these families would rely on in times of hardship has also come undone. Between 2003 and 2010, the state rejected about half of the applicants to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF, a federally funded state-run <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/temporary-assistance-for-needy-families">program</a> that provides emergency assistance to families in times of need. In 2011, the state's rejection rate moved up to 89% and has inched up every year since. In a state with 51 counties dealing with persistent poverty, only 7,000 people in Mississippi meet state standards to receive a monthly check of $170 for a family of three.</p><p>"The denial of rights and privileges, and privileges, the things that we normally would consider to be basics, they are not so basic anymore," Sen. John Horhn told me.</p><p>Yet just six weeks before Mississippi issued its stay-at-home order, its former welfare director, four of his colleagues, and a former pro wrestler were <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/06/803399172/mississippis-ex-welfare-director-5-others-arrested-in-massive-fraud">charged</a> with carrying out a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme. This operation used public money from needy families for the personal use of those involved in the scheme. Money was even used for a luxury rehab stay in California. Mississippi has funds to help its poorest citizens, but those funds have now been squandered by people who didn't need them.</p><p>The Affordable Care Act, passed during the Obama administration, made it so that states could expand their Medicaid programs to households making less than 138% of the federal poverty limit. Previously, those benefits were available only to people below the poverty line. Expanding the program would cover 130,000 poor Mississippians. But Mississippi declined to expand, and Republican Tate Reeves, elected governor in November 2019, ran on a platform promising to keep it that way.</p><p><div type="image" title="eubanks3" height="3280" width="4915" msid="75298892" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Even in a full-blown public-health emergency, Reeves has said he had no plans to change his position.</p><p>"We do have a lot of people in our state who are either obese or headed towards obesity, and that's not a good condition to have if you were to contract the virus. That puts you in a higher-risk category because you're going to have similar challenges breathing, et cetera, if you get one of the horrible cases," Reeves told Mississippi Today in a recent <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2020/03/30/gov-tate-reeves-defends-handling-of-the-covid-19-crisis-talks-medicaid-expansion-trump-and-his-controversial-spain-trip/">interview</a>.</p><p>He claimed to be working to provide access to care for every Mississippian. But he also stressed the state had to prioritize who gets care.</p><p>"We don't need everyone who's sneezing to run and get a test," Reeves said.</p><p>A lack of sensitivity seems to be a recurring theme for Reeves. Just days after finally <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/04/07/mississippi-governor-takes-break-from-pandemic-response-to-declare-confederate-heritage-month/">issuing</a> a shelter-in-place order, he proclaimed April Confederate Heritage Month. Oddly, his proclamation failed to mention slavery, ignoring both the real reason Mississippi seceded from the Union, and legacy of its successor, Jim Crow. In the absence of a sound plan to keep his constituents safe, Reeves embraced Southern essentialism, shielding himself from the racial and economic realities of life in the state he governs. He went further by appointing not a single African American to his COVID-19 economic recovery team.</p><p>In Mississippi and across the American South, politicians often cleave to a regressive idea of the South seemingly out of the 1950s, an era defined by white supremacist politics and rhetoric. In draping himself in the Confederate legacy, Reeves reminds nearly 40% of his constituents that white supremacy is about denying opportunity to African Americans and ensuring their impoverishment. A proclamation of Confederate Heritage Month, then, feels like a celebration of that impoverishment.</p><p>If Mississippi, my home state, can sever its linkage to the Confederate imagery and its associated rhetoric, it can reimagine its cultural identity and shift its narrative. Yet Mississippi's narrative seems to be caught in a feedback loop, one that reinforces the idea of a closed society, one that led a newspaper <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/07/12/archives/new-and-old-times-there-mississippi-the-closed-society-by-james-w.html">editorial</a> during Reconstruction to proclaim: "This is a White Man's Government; and trusting in our firm purpose, our good right arms and the God of Right, we will maintain it so."<br /><br />"Once if you were pushing against the state government, you could rely on the courts for help," Sen. Horhn reminded me. "But you can't do that anymore. At one time you could rely on the federal government to provide basic supplies and food for people in abject poverty, and you can't even depend on them anymore." Instead, black Mississippians feel abandoned and alone.</p><p>Mississippi has always gone it alone. Maybe this pandemic — and the economic issues it places into full view — will finally open up the closed society.</p><p><em><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/w-ralph-eubanks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">W. Ralph Eubanks</a> is the author of "Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past" and "The House at the End of the Road." He is a visiting professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.</em></p>Read the original article on <a href="https://www.insider.com/coronavirus-mississippi-african-american-tate-reeves-obama-healthcare-economy">Insider</a>

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<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58fcf79a7522ca5b5f8b510b-2400/ap17090746132056.jpg" alt="Peter Navarro" /><p class="source"><span>AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</span></p><p class="caption">Peter Navarro.</p>President Donald Trump's reversal on labeling China as a currency manipulator, as well as an overall softer stance toward a country he routinely lambasted on the campaign trail, have raised new questions about the role of a top member of his Cabinet.<p>Peter Navarro, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/icahn-trump-china-trade-war-2016-12" target="_blank">the head of the newly formed</a> White House National Trade Council and a top economic adviser to Trump, was believed to be quite possibly the most influential member of the West Wing when it came to matters of international trade, particularly involving the Chinese.</p><p>An outspoken China hawk, the ex-professor authored books such as "Death by China" and "Crouching Tiger: What China's Militarism Means for the World." He advocated for a much more aggressive stance against the Asian superpower. He believed, much as Trump expressed along the campaign trail, that China was responsible for a glut of manufacturing jobs exiting the US, pointing to China's manipulating of its currency as a top reason for why that was such.</p><p>In the White House, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-team-china-hawks-2017-1" target="_blank">Navarro was set to be</a> Trump's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/china-us-trade-peter-navarro-trump-2016-12" target="_blank">right-hand man</a> in alliance with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and US Trade Representative nominee Robert Lighthizer. Together, advocates believed they would wage a major economic battle against China. Navarro already believes that China is engaged in an economic war against the US.</p><p>But Trump's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-china-currency-export-import-campaign-promises-2017-4" target="_blank">recent comments</a> sent a shockwave to watchers of the Trump-China relationship and made them wonder if Navarro's influence has been limited.</p><p>And the comments made it appear as if Navarro's influence was being limited.</p><p>"What is left for him to do?" one top Republican operative on matters of trade told Business Insider of Navarro. The operative said it's becoming clear that head of the National Economic Council and ex-Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn is exerting increasing influence in the trade policy realm.</p><p>The operative suggested that while Trump's comments will be viewed as a "betrayal" to his trade supporters, the move against labeling China as a currency manipulator makes sense - as trade, he said, is the "only" negotiating tool Trump has it his disposal regarding China and North Korea.</p><p>The appearance of Navarro's profile becoming more limited comes at a time when an apparent power struggle is playing out in the White House. The "Goldman Sachs" wing of New York businesspeople - Cohn, senior adviser Jared Kushner, assistant Ivanka Trump, and Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell - has sparred with the more populist, nationalist wing headed by chief strategist Steve Bannon. Navarro's views on trade fit in more with the Bannon wing, which has <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-steve-bannon-hes-a-guy-who-works-for-me-jared-kushner-2017-4" target="_blank">seemingly lost some of the power it held</a> at the start of the Trump presidency.</p><p><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/jared-kushner-steve-bannon-white-house-civil-war" target="_blank">According to a recent story in Vanity Fair</a>, Navarro was brought into the Trump orbit by Kushner, who contacted the professor after browsing Amazon for a book that seemed to match Trump's views on China. Trump has commissioned Kushner to find someone to speak with on China, and Kushner stumbled upon "Death by China." In announcing Navarro's hiring, Trump said in a statement that he "read one of Peter's books on America's trade problems years ago and was impressed by the clarity of his arguments and thoroughness of his research."</p><p>"He has presciently documented the harms inflicted by globalism on American workers and laid out a path forward to restore our middle class," Trump's statement said. "He will fulfill an essential role in my administration as a trade adviser."</p><p>Lee Branstetter, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who served on President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers from 2011 through 2012 who is opposed to many of the trade proposals championed by both Trump and Navarro, said Navarro hasn't appeared to have had much say in trade policy thus far.</p><p>"It certainly does seem to be the case that Peter Navarro is not going to have the kind of impact on trade policy that we might have expected based on the campaign rhetoric, or even what Peter himself might have expected when he accepted this position to head this new council within the White House," Branstetter said.</p><p>But Branstetter said this could stem from how little power Navarro's council has among the many White House agencies.</p><p>"Lots of administrations start lots of little councils inside the White House to address various constituencies, and many of them are quite small and quite under resourced," he said. "And in the interagency game of jockeying for power and influence, these little councils can also be at a grave disadvantage, relative to the big agencies and the more established consultative councils within the White House, like a National Security Council or a National Economic Council."</p><p>"I worked for a White House that was very different from the Trump White House, but this phenomenon of lots of little councils that weren't necessarily doing a whole heck of a lot was certainly a feature of the Obama administration and probably in all administrations that we see today," he continued. "It's easy to set something up in order to trumpet its importance, to signal to a key constituency, but it doesn't really do much beyond that."</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-peter-navarro-china-national-trade-council-2016-12" target="_blank">When Navarro's position was first announced</a>, the council's responsibilities were detailed as advising the president on trade negotiations, coordinating with other agencies, and assisting unemployed workers. The council was also designed to lead Trump's "Buy America, Hire America" program, aimed at boosting jobs in infrastructure and defense sectors.</p><p>And just days after Trump's surprising comments on Chinese currency manipulation, he signed his "Buy American, Hire American" executive order, setting in motion one of Navarro's largest responsibilities. The adviser quickly made <a href="https://twitter.com/FoxBusiness/status/854333947072856064" target="_blank">TV appearances to talk up</a> aspects of the order, and the White House pushed out a Navarro statement praising the order.</p><p>But with a number of Trump's promised trade initiatives being slow to get off the ground - leaving some to fear they may not be happening - Navarro's influence is increasingly under question.</p><p>Lori Wallach, head of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a group generally in favor of the trade reforms proposed by Trump, told Business Insider that Navarro is attempting to help implement the Trump trade agenda with a number of less protectionist members of the Cabinet seemingly in opposition. And as Lighthizer has still not been confirmed - meaning that, additionally, most of the top political positions in the US trade representative's office are still yet to be filled - she said Navarro has been forced to go at it without much help.</p><p>"You've got the one person in the saddle who doesn't have structurally, [the staff,] or experience wise, the chops, to get into a huge Washington policy war," she said. "As a result, first there is the fight over the ideology, and then the second issue is not having the hands on deck to do the implementation."</p><p>"While a bunch of this initial skirmish was occurring, it was Peter Navarro, who is obviously a very bright and committed guy, but is the one guy who is not cabinet level ... so he doesn't even have the capacity to be in most of those meetings," she added. "He is someone who is the least sort of political Machiavellian in the sense that he's never played in this setting."</p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/alec-baldwin-mocks-trump-oreilly-snl-fox-news-sexual-harassment-advertisers-2017-4">'Just a loose hunch': Watch Alec Baldwin impersonate Trump and Bill O'Reilly on 'SNL'</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video                    

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