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Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Thursday, April tenth, twenty twenty five. The bar for

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Speaker 1: teacher training has never been lower. Some Australian universities are

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Speaker 1: enrolling students to their teaching programs with ATAR scores below fifty,

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Speaker 1: and it could explain why student teacher numbers have suddenly jumped.

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Speaker 1: That exclusive story from Education editor Natasha Beta is live

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Speaker 1: right now at The Australian dot com dot au. Two

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Speaker 1: of Donald Trump's closest advisors are at each other's throats.

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Speaker 1: The world's richest man, Elon Musk, is openly ridiculing Peter Navarro,

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Speaker 1: the architect of the Trump tariffs that have rocked the

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Speaker 1: world today. What's going on inside the White House?

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Speaker 2: Navarro's truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false.

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Speaker 1: That's a tweet by Elon Musk, Donald Trump's right hand man,

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Speaker 1: and he's talking about Trump's left hand man, Peter Navarro.

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Speaker 2: Ritardo is dangerously dumb. Independent experts agree that he is retarded.

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Speaker 1: Those are Elon Musk's words, but we've used an AI

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Speaker 1: voice to read them. Navarro is one of the key

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Speaker 1: architects of Trump's tariffs, you know, the ones presently wiping

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Speaker 1: billions of all our retirement savings, the Australian dollar and

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Speaker 1: the value of all stocks. Masque's beef with him is

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Speaker 1: about tariffs and Navarro's suggestion that Mosk's car company Tesla

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Speaker 1: uses foreign components.

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Speaker 2: Dsla has the most American made cars. Navarro's dumber than

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Speaker 2: a sack of bricks.

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Speaker 3: Trump is a chaos agent. In fact, I think he

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Speaker 3: tends to thrive on chaos.

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Speaker 1: Joe Kelly is the Australian's correspondent in Washington, DC.

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Speaker 3: I think there'd be a lot of frustration about the

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Speaker 3: status that Navarro has in Trump's center circle. And I

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Speaker 3: think that's what we're seeing from Elon Musk, who clearly

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Speaker 3: thinks the direction of trade policy makes no sense and

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Speaker 3: is publicly revealing his frustrations, which is the other fascinating thing.

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Speaker 3: He feels free he can do that, that he can

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Speaker 3: say these things on social media and there's been no

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Speaker 3: intervention from Trump, and in fact, Carolyn Levitt in the

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Speaker 3: press briefing earlier today sort of almost seemed to poke

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Speaker 3: fun at it. Obviously, two individuals who have very different

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Speaker 3: views on trade and on Tariff's boys will be boys

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Speaker 3: and we will let their public sparring continue.

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Speaker 1: Here's what Navarro said.

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Speaker 4: The American people understand that Eli's a car manufacturer, but

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Speaker 4: he's not a car manufacturer. He's a car assembler. In

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Speaker 4: many cases, if you go to his Texas plan, a

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Speaker 4: good part of the engines that he gets, which in

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Speaker 4: the ed case is the batteries come from Japan and

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Speaker 4: come from China, the electronics come from Taiwan. What we

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Speaker 4: want and the difference is in our thinking in elons

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Speaker 4: on this is that we want the tires made in Akron,

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Speaker 4: we want the transmissions made in Indianapolis, we want the

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Speaker 4: engines made in Flint and Saginaw, and we want the

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Speaker 4: cars manufactured here.

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Speaker 1: During a flurry of ridicule on x, Musk also said.

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Speaker 2: Peace by any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically

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Speaker 2: integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of

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Speaker 2: US content. Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented

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Speaker 2: ron Vara just as an assign.

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Speaker 1: That's a character Pitanavarro, who's a Harvard trained economics PhD,

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Speaker 1: invented when he was a university lecturer in several of

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Speaker 1: his books, Navarro quoted an individual named ron Vara that's

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Speaker 1: an anagram of his own surname, offering wisdom on issues

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Speaker 1: like investing. He subsequently said it was a whimsical pen

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Speaker 1: name he occasionally used.

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Speaker 2: Joe.

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Speaker 1: It's not surprising that the interests of a billionaire like

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Speaker 1: Elon mask or even a billionaire like Donald Trump would

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Speaker 1: clash with an anti free trade agenda. Billionaires have had

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Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars wiped off their personal wealth.

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Speaker 1: Speaking by and large, but Masks dislike of Peter Navarro

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Speaker 1: seems to be more visceral than that. What do you

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Speaker 1: think is actually going on between these two men.

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Speaker 3: Well, to be honest, Claire, I think what's going on

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Speaker 3: is that there's annoyance and frustration within the Trump administration

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Speaker 3: that Navarro is the guy who's calling the shots on trade.

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Speaker 3: Navarro is the guy who seems to be able to

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Speaker 3: influence Donald Trump to take a really strong, across the

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Speaker 3: board stance on tariff's with a baseline ten percent tariff.

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Speaker 3: And my information is that when you look at the

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Speaker 3: influence of the broader range of economic members in Trump's team,

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Speaker 3: we're talking about people like Scott Bessett's Treasury secretary, how

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Speaker 3: Lutnik is Commerce Secretary. Even Jamison Greer is the USTR.

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Speaker 3: Trump seems to be more inclined to listen to Navarro.

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Speaker 3: I think it must be frustrating to other members of

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Speaker 3: the Trump economic team. But Navarro is part of the

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Speaker 3: inner circle. He's been there in the trenches with Trump

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Speaker 3: for years, and so he's got a lot of loyalty

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Speaker 3: capital with Trump that's built up.

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Speaker 1: It's a really interesting philosophical difference, isn't it, between you know,

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Speaker 1: the old team Trump and the new Does it prompt

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Speaker 1: us to ask questions about what is it exactly that

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk sees in Donald Trump. If he doesn't like

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Speaker 1: this core belief of Donald Trump's which he's been talking

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Speaker 1: about since the eighties, then what is it?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really fascinating question, I think Claire, this

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Speaker 3: alliance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and also between

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Speaker 3: the tech giants and Donald Trump, which we're also seeing

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Speaker 3: at the moment. Look putting trade to one side, Donald

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Speaker 3: Trump has adopted fiercely sort of pro business policies. He

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Speaker 3: has a very aggressive deregulation agenda, which Elon Musk certainly

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Speaker 3: likes and obviously would see lots of advantages in that

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Speaker 3: for himself. He's got a load tax agenda as well. Obviously,

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Speaker 3: this was what a lot of the excitement was going

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Speaker 3: into January twenty. Wall Street was really excited about the

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Speaker 3: prospect of a booming US economy and growth really taking off.

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Speaker 3: And it's the tariff agenda which has served as the

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Speaker 3: dist which is undermining that sense of optimism and really

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Speaker 3: creating a lot of uncertainty for business owners. People are

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Speaker 3: talking about tariff whiplash. So even if the tariffs, you know,

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Speaker 3: are changed after a short period of time, or an

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Speaker 3: exemption is granted before particular tariffs come in for a

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Speaker 3: month or however long it is, there's really no certainty

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Speaker 3: for businesses to make plans. There are parts of Trump's

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Speaker 3: agenda which seem at conflict with one another. This is

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Speaker 3: what makes Trump such a complicated political figure and operator.

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Speaker 3: There are probably aspects of the Trump agenda Elon Musk

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Speaker 3: doesn't really like, and he's making it clear, which is

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Speaker 3: really fascinating.

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Speaker 1: Coming up. So if Peter Navarro is the one shaking

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Speaker 1: the world, what does he really believe in?

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Speaker 4: They're coming now and saying, we want to talk, will

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Speaker 4: lower our tariffs to zero. If you'll lower your tears,

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Speaker 4: that's not the problem.

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Speaker 1: Here's an insight into what Peter Navarro thinks. Having just

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Speaker 1: orchestrated globe shattering tariffs, he says, well, tariffs can't really

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Speaker 1: fix the big problem anyway.

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Speaker 4: Vietnam is a great example, Lauri. They sell US fifteen

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Speaker 4: dollars for everyone we sell them zero. TIFFs would get

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Speaker 4: us no reduction in the one hundred and twenty three

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Speaker 4: billion dollar deficit we have.

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Speaker 1: The big problem, Navarro says, is the fact that the

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Speaker 1: US imports more than it exports to low wage countries

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Speaker 1: like Vietnam, which he thinks are stooges for China anyway.

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Speaker 1: But then on other issues, Navarro argues the opposite, like Australia.

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Speaker 1: For example, America has a trade surplus with US, that is,

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Speaker 1: we buy more of their exports like machinery and chemicals

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Speaker 1: then they buy of Australian goods like raw meat and

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Speaker 1: some manufactured goods.

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Speaker 3: Navarro was able to exert great influence over the shape

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Speaker 3: of Donald Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, and he was the

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Speaker 3: person that Donald Trump listened to the most. He was

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Speaker 3: forcefully arguing for a universal across the board tariff, and frankly,

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Speaker 3: given his influence, I think Australia actually was quite lucky

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Speaker 3: to get away with the ten percent. I think that

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Speaker 3: baseline tariff, had Navarro had his way, could have been

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Speaker 3: substantially higher than ten percent. He was particularly exercised about

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Speaker 3: Australian beef. For example, the US keeps saying that we

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Speaker 3: ban American beef. Well, actually, we just have a requirement

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Speaker 3: that the US needs to certify that the beef comes

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Speaker 3: from America, and we've been insisting on that, I think

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Speaker 3: since about twenty nineteen, because we're concerned about beef coming

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Speaker 3: in from Mexico or Canada that might have diseases in it.

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Speaker 3: We accept that the beef is fine from the US,

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Speaker 3: but we just need to know that's where it comes from.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And it suggests that this is not the only

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Speaker 1: instance in which Peter Navarro has got the wrong end

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Speaker 1: of the stick, doesn't it? Or that the American administration

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Speaker 1: has the wrong end of a stick in what it

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Speaker 1: perceives as being it's trade relationships and that everybody's doing

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Speaker 1: America over.

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Speaker 3: Well, look, I just make one other point about Peter Navarro.

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Speaker 3: Since the Liberation Day tariffs were announced, the stock market

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Speaker 3: has gone crazy. I think in the first two days

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Speaker 3: it was about six point five trillion in value gone.

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Speaker 3: Navarro is out very forcefully saying the stock market will

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Speaker 3: be booming, it will bounce back. This is all an

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Speaker 3: adjustment period. Things are going to be okay. Don't panic,

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Speaker 3: don't sell your shares. But the reason he's saying that

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Speaker 3: is because he's got the most to lose. I think,

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Speaker 3: if this policy is seen to fail, and so far

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Speaker 3: I don't think it's looking good, the person with a

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Speaker 3: target on his back, in my view, is Peter Novara.

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Speaker 1: Joe Kelly is The Australian's correspondent in Washington, DC,