Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said late last week that it was premature to speculate about the size of the next coronavirus relief package. “Before we rush back and spend more money, whether that’s a trillion dollars or whether that’s more, we want to make sure we’re careful in knowing how much more we need to spend,” he said.
So maybe White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was being premature, but twice in recent days he has said that President Trump is looking for the next stimulus to be at least $2 trillion and wants the package to be focused on boosting U.S. manufacturing.
“The president is very interested in something on the order of at least $2 trillion, with the bulk of that focused on bringing home our manufacturing base, starting with pharmaceuticals and medical supplies and equipment,” he told Fox Business on Friday. He made similar comments on CNN on Saturday, saying that Trump wants to see "at least $2 trillion that is strategically focused around the president's two simple rules—buy American, hire American—along with incentives for American companies to bring offshored jobs back home."
The $2 trillion figure floated by Navarro falls between the $3 trillion that House Democrats provided in a bill they passed a month ago and the $1 trillion that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly set as a ceiling for the next package.
