In 2016, Navarro served as an economic policy adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He advocated for an isolationist and protectionist American foreign policy. Navarro and the international private equity investor Wilbur Ross authored an economic plan for the Trump campaign in September 2016. Navarro was invited to be an adviser after Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner saw on Amazon that he co-wrote "Death by China". When told that the Tax Policy Center assessment of Trump's economic plan said it would reduce federal revenues by $6 trillion and reduce economic growth in the long term, Navarro said that the analysis demonstrated "a high degree of analytical and political malfeasance". When the Peterson Institute for International Affairs estimated that Trump's economic plan would cost millions of Americans their jobs, Navarro said that writers at the Peterson Institute "weave a false narrative and they come up with some phony numbers." According to MIT economist Simon Johnson, the economic plan essay authored by Navarro and Ross for Trump during the campaign had projections "based on assumptions so unrealistic that they seem to have come from a different planet. If the United States really did adopt Trump's plan, the result would be an immediate and unmitigated disaster." When 370 economists, including 19 Nobel laureates, signed a letter warning against Trump's stated economic policies in November 2016, Navarro said that the letter was "an embarrassment to the corporate offshoring wing of the economist profession who continues to insist bad trade deals are good for America."