白宫顾问：用AI打击中国转运规避关税

Senior White House adviser Peter Navarro joins us now. Thank you so much for being with us. I would love to start with a question of what motivated you to write the op ed that you just wrote and just got published now. Thank you so much, Lisa. And, I'm happy to get Bloomberg, actually the exclusive on this. This is, the report itself, the grand transshipment scam, and you can download it, on the white house, .gov site or, read the, op ed New York Times, and you can download it there.

My job at the White House, going back to the first term in the first day, is to protect American workers and businesses from predatory mercantilist practices. And as you know, China leads the list in that category. Back in 2018, Lisa, we put on the historic, three zero one section three zero one tariffs, on China, to protect American workers, and it's been a very successful policy. But what happened beginning immediately in 2018 is that China strategically began to develop methods of of what's called trans shipping.

It's basically a modern form of smuggling. The crudest form of trans shipping is when China takes a crate of widgets, sends them over to Vietnam or Mexico or Turkey or wherever, and then they swap labels. It comes into America at the lower tariff rate. China makes out like a bandit. The trans shipping third country makes out because it's, it's facilitating some commerce there, and, we get, cheated out of jobs and treasury revenues.

So I've taken this, very seriously over the years. I've been working very closely with customs and border protection, and, we're cracking down. And what's really interesting is this new AI detective border that we're developing at, customs and border protection. In the past, it's been basically paperwork and people, and they've been overwhelmed by the flood of tariff evasion in in the era of Trump tariffs. And what AI can do with this detective border, and one of the companies we're working with is Exeger.

It's a fantastic company, is we could see, in real time every boat and every container coming out in every port in the world. And what we can do with AI in in in at the speed of scam is assess with a very high degree of accuracy the probability that that's a that's a transshipment. And then what we can do when the boat gets here, we slap them with a form 28 and then of likely a form 29 and collect the revenues that they cheapen it.

Peter, we know this is happening because It's a revolution. Because the Chinese trade deficit is falling, but trade flows are staying stable. So it shows that China is doubling down on transshipment. But is there appetite from this administration to go after Beijing for this given that there is a debate within the Oval Office about wanting to make sure that they keep the truce alive, and Xi Jinping is set to visit the president.

You work looking at the wrong target here. The the what's so amazing about this report in my research is it's not about going after China. It's about going after the more than 40 countries. And I was surprised by this, frankly. I was surprised how many trans shipping countries. It's going about them, and is there appetite? You damn well there's appetite. It starts with our great US trade representative, Jameson Greer.

What we're doing systematically is negotiating these new deals one by one, with countries, that wanna basically get their tariffs lowered and do that by lowering their own barriers and not cheating. And so, every new trade agreement actually has a transshipment provision, which basically says if that country participates in the grand transshipment game, if it continues to be part of the shadow transshipment network, it will pay a very heavy price.

And so the crackdown, we we understand so, like, China is just being China. Okay? And and shame on America, shame on the Biden regime for not cracking down on this. Okay? But that the way to crack down on it is not going after China. It's the going after the enablers. And what's so interesting about this whole thing is it's it's yeah. I got a doctorate in economics, and and and and part of my thing was industrial organization strategy.

I mean, the the complexity of the strategies that China is using to evade these tariffs, is mind numbing. I mean, literally, over 40 countries are involved big and small. Surprisingly, Mexico is one of the biggest ones. They're able to basically get the USMCA tariffs, through deceit. Oh, hold on a second. India is well on the radar screen. You wouldn't think that. And then Southeast Asia is kind of the mother lode of the whole thing as you might expect, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia Yeah.

And and and so on. When I was reading when I was reading this report and when I was reading your op ed, one thing that stuck out to me was that The US is currently ongoing, with negotiations to renegotiate USMCA with Canada and Mexico, and you pinpointed Mexico and Canada as some of the offenders. How does this affect negotiations? Does it make it less likely, frankly, that there will be some sort of new deal that is solidified in the near term?

No. It makes it more likely that any deal that's done will, have a transshipment, provision in it, a very strong one. And, again, I wanna emphasize here who he here this is basically a warning to the world. Don't don't try to cheat America. And our our our our our multipronged strategy basically, involves first of all, the president signed, a new executive order last month that dramatically increases the teeth that customs and border has in terms of cracking down on this kind of transshipment.

So that's number one. Number two, we've also arming them with this detective border. And by the way, we we're hitting we're hitting, like, over 95% hit rates in terms of accuracy, in terms of identifying trans shippers, and that's off the charts. And then the third part of of this approach we take, is with The United States trade representative. Every deal that we make, and we're making a lot of good deals for America, has a very strong transshipment provision in it.

So we're gonna put a stop to that, and, countries are gonna understand that very quickly that that if they cheat, we'll catch them. And if we catch them, then they'll pay a very heavy price. Peter, we're up against the clock. That they won't do it. And I just want to squeeze this in. Why has the overcapacity three zero one not been published yet? I I don't see Jameson Greer on the set. He'll come here any time you want.

Well, he's your colleague. So maybe you can us out office. I'll tell I can tell you this. We are doing, an amazing amount of three o ones. At the same time, we're doing an amazing amount of trade deals, and we are moving in Trump time, and we're getting stuff done. And even as the news of the day is we're having to refund tariffs over here because of the supreme court decision, What that decision did was was, basically ratify the legality of 03/2001, two thirty two.

We've got a a section one twenty two, a hundred and fifty day, 10% tariff in place. And tariffs are very important part of the American, tradition in terms of promoting our economic and national security. So, again, I everybody out there in Bloomberg land, you'll find this really interesting as a document, and it it's really a window into the world as to how the the financial system, the trading system, is adapting in some sense and is, in some sense, very bad ways to a tariff regime.

But we will defend American business. We will defend American jobs. Yeah. And we're stopping the great transshipment scam. I I thank Bloomberg for debuting this today.