Navarro's views on trade are significantly outside the mainstream of economic thought, and are widely considered fringe by other economists.^{[5][6][7][8][9]} A strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits, Navarro is well known as a critic of Germany and China and has accused both nations of currency manipulation.^[10] He has called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, setting high tariffs, and "repatriating global supply chains."^[11] He is also a vocal opponent of multilateral free trade agreements such as NAFTA^[12] and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.^[13]

In the Trump administration, Navarro was a hawkish advisor on trade, as he encouraged Trump to implement trade protectionist policies.^{[14][15][16][17]} In explaining his role in the Trump administration, Navarro said that he is there to "provide the underlying analytics that confirm [Trump's] intuition [on trade]. And his intuition is always right in these matters."^[7] In 2018, as the Trump administration was implementing trade restrictionist policies, Navarro argued that no countries would retaliate against U.S. tariffs "for the simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world"; shortly after the implementation of the tariffs, other countries did implement retaliatory tariffs against the United States, leading to trade wars.^[18][19]

During his final year in the Trump administration, Navarro was involved in the administration's COVID-19 response. Early on, he issued private warnings within the administration about the threat posed by the virus, but downplayed the risks in public.^[20] He publicly clashed with Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as Navarro touted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment of COVID-19 and condemned various public health measures to stop the spread of the virus.