"The Economist" described Navarro as having "oddball views". The George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen has described Navarro as "one of the most versatile and productive American economists of the last few decades", but Cowen noted that he disagreed with his views on trade, which he claimed go "against a strong professional consensus." University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers described Navarro's views as "far outside the mainstream," noting that "he endorses few of the key tenets of" the economics profession. According to Lee Branstetter, economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University and trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Navarro "was never a part of the group of economists who ever studied the global free-trade system ... He doesn't publish in journals. What he's writing and saying right now has nothing to do with what he got his Harvard Ph.D. in ... he doesn't do research that would meet the scientific standards of that community." Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, described a tax and trade paper written by Navarro and Wilbur Ross for Trump as "a complete misunderstanding of international trade, on their part."