General Discussion

Peter Navarro Invented an Expert for His Books, Based on Himself
President Trump’s trade adviser frequently cited Ron Vara, a fictional source who was a critic of China, in his writings.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/us/politics/peter-navarro-ron-vara.html

Oct. 16, 2019
Peter Navarro, a top White House trade adviser, has developed a reputation in Washington as a Rasputin-like China hawk who whispers anti-China musings in President Trump’s ear.

This week, Washington learned about the mysterious anti-China voice that has long whispered in Mr. Navarro’s ear: Ron Vara.

Ron Vara has appeared as a cryptic voice of economic wisdom more than a dozen times in five of Mr. Navarro’s 13 books, dispensing musings like “You’ve got to be nuts to eat Chinese food” and “Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel.”

But Ron Vara, it turns out, does not exist. At least not in corporeal form. He is apparently a figment of Mr. Navarro’s imagination — an anagram of Mr. Navarro’s surname that the trade adviser created as a Hitchcockian writing device and stuck with as something of an inside joke with himself.



Ron Vara, A.K.A. Peter Navarro, Highlights Case for More China Tariffs

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/navarro-ron-vara-tarrifs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9U4.EBCG.8AjmfFR9eBQ7&smid=url-share

"... Ron Vara is the fictional character that Mr. Navarro created and cited as an expert more than a dozen times in five of his 13 books, where he offered searing critiques of China. Mr. Navarro’s use of the fabricated source emerged in October after an Australian scholar reviewed all of Mr. Navarro’s writing and discovered that one of his sources was imaginary..."


One important thing people are missing about Peter Navarro and ‘Ron Vara’
October 22, 2019

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/22/one-important-thing-people-are-missing-about-peter-navarro-ron-vara/

"Peter Navarro’s use of a fictional China trade hawk named “Ron Vara” in his books is an irresistible story. Here is the top trade adviser for President Trump — himself a fan of fake characters like “John Barron” giving quotes — using a fake economist to bolster his points.
And now China is seizing on it, given Navarro’s role in pushing Trump’s trade war. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Tuesday that the world is “in uproar and shocked.” He also accused the Trump administration of conducting trade policy based on lies.
But here’s the thing: Navarro’s offense may not be as bad as you think it is.
The story was first broken last week by the Chronicle of Higher Education, which noted that Navarro wrote about Vara and quoted him in a number of nonfiction books but that there is no record of him existing. Navarro copped to the invention, calling Ron Vara — an anagram of “Navarro” — “a whimsical device and pen name I’ve used throughout the years for opinions and purely entertainment value, not as a source of fact.”