Trade advisor Peter Navarro hypes stock market after plunge

President Donald Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro on Friday encouraged Americans to buy stocks one day after dismissing a steep market drop fueled by fears of a tariff-induced slowdown as “no big deal.”

Navarro predicted market gains will result from Trump’s proposed U.S. tax cuts, and from potential trade deals with countries seeking to avoid higher tariffs he has threatened.

“Let me just say, ninety deals in ninety days, biggest, broadest tax cut in American history should be driving the tape,” Navarro said in an interview on Fox Business Network. “That’s what’s going to be a bullish market.”

“If you’re not long, you’re going to get left behind,” he added.

Navarro’s comments echo those from Trump and other officials, who talked up the stock market in the face of high volatility and price swings over the past week.

“This team is just the best in history,” Navarro said of Trump’s economic advisors. “America should trust in Trump. The market should trust in Trump and not get these weak knees, because this is going to be bullish.”

As of Friday, the benchmark S&P 500 stock market index was 12.5% below its opening value on Jan. 20, the day Trump reentered the White House.

But Navarro, speaking before the opening of the trading day, argued that people who own stock that has dropped in recent weeks only have paper losses.

“If you don’t sell, you don’t lose,” he said.

The advisor also took a shot at JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

“Jamie Dimon, while he’s wringing his hands about all this, his firm made out like bandits trading on the volatility,” Navarro told Fox Business.

“And that’s the concern here. The small investor needs to just sit tight, not panic, and don’t let these big firms shake you out.”

He added, “I’d rather have mom and pop have a solid portfolio than Jamie Dimon have another billion dollars.”

Following JPMorgan Chase’s positive earnings report Friday morning, Dimon said, “The economy is facing considerable turbulence including geopolitics, with the potential positives of tax reform and deregulation and the potential negatives of tariffs and ‘trade wars,’ ongoing sticky inflation, high fiscal deficits and still rather high asset prices and volatility.”

“As always, we hope for the best but prepare the Firm for a wide range of scenarios,” Dimon said.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 saw a drop of 3.46%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1,000 points, or 2.5%.

Those declines came a day after stock market indices rocketed upwards, on news of Trump’s pause for 90 days of higher-than-baseline tariffs on all countries except China.

Hours before he announced the tariff pause Wednesday, Trump appeared to tout the stock market, which at the time had fallen for four straight days on fears of tariff-induced recession.

“BE COOL!” Trump wrote on Wednesday. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”

But Thursday’s stock market pullback came after analysts pointed out that the overall U.S. tariff rate on imports was very high as a result of additional duties Trump slapped on Chinese imports Wednesday.

“You had the highest rise in stock market history yesterday,” Navarro said on CNN Thursday. “Of course, there’s gonna be a little pullback. The question is: What spin are you gonna put on it?”

“It’s just normal retracement after a big day. It’s no big deal,” Navarro said.

Days earlier, Navarro had touted the stock market during a Sunday interview on Fox News.

“You can’t lose money unless you sell and right now the smart strategy is not to panic, just stay in because we are going to have the biggest boom in the stock market we’ve ever seen,” Navarro told “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“We will hit 50,000 on the Dow by the end of this term.”

— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this story.