Trump appoints China critic Peter Navarro to head White House National Trade Council

The presidential transition team has announced that Peter Navarro will head up the newly created White House National Trade Council. He will serve as assistant to the president and director of trade and industrial policy.

The statement described the University of California professor as "a visionary economist" who will "develop trade policies that shrink our trade deficit, expand our growth, and help stop the exodus of jobs from our shores."

It also said the National Trade Council's mission was to advise the president on strategies in trade negotiations, as well as to work developing manufacturing, defence and create jobs.

Navarro is noted as being a vocal critic of China, a country the president-elect already upset after with his phone call to the Taiwanese president.

He wrote a book in 2011 entitled Death By China, which was also made into a documentary. The documentary starts off with a knife with "made in China" written along the blade, stabbing into a map of the USA.

Just before the election, Navarro and Wilbur Ross, Trump's nominee for commerce secretary, wrote in the IBTimes UK that "with a Trump presidency, the American economy will reawaken".

"I 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," said President-elect Trump.

"He has presciently documented the harms inflicted by globalism on American workers, and laid out a path forward to restore our middle class. He will fulfil an essential role in my administration as a trade adviser."