White House trade advisor Peter Navarro brushed off concerns Wednesday about the unexpected drop in U.S. gross domestic product last quarter, saying, ‘We really like where we’re at now,” and pointing to a surge in new domestic investment.
“I got to say just one thing about today’s news, that’s the best negative print I have ever seen in my life,” Navarro said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” after the Commerce Department reported that GDP fell at a 0.3% annualized pace in the first quarter of 2025.
“The markets need to, like, look beneath the surface of that” figure, said Navarro, an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy.
“We had a 22% increase in domestic investment,” he said.
“That is off the charts when you strip out inventories and the negative effects of the surge in imports because of the tariffs, you had 3% growth,” Navarro said.
“So, we really like where we’re at now,” he added.
Major stock market indices were down in morning trading on the heels of the GDP report, which captured economic data from the first two full months of Trump’s second term in the White House.
This is not the first time that Navarro has dismissed concerns about the damaging effect of Trump’s policies on the U.S. economy.
Earlier this month, Navarro described a massive April 10 market drop that was fueled by fears Trump’s broad new tariffs as “no big deal.”
That day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1,000 points and the benchmark S&P 500 index of U.S. stocks lost 3.46%.
So far this year, the S&P 500 is down more than 7%.
