In April 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was enacting a massive round of tariffs, or taxes on imported goods, on practically all foreign countries. The decision was controversial, to say the least.
After the tariff announcement, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's show ran a segment aiming to explain the origins of the tariffs and argue against their implementation. During the segment, Maddow made a bold claim: Peter Navarro, a Trump economic adviser known for supporting anti-China and pro-tariff policies, had repeatedly cited an expert who did not exist to justify his positions. The allegedly fictional expert's name was "Ron Vara" — an anagram of "Navarro." According to the Maddow segment, Navarro used the Ron Vara pseudonym as a source in several of his books, and published a pro-tariff memo under the name.
Clips of the segment went viral on social media and Snopes readers wrote in asking if the story was true.
It was, according to The New York Times. Navarro's books do occasionally feature references to a "Ron Vara," the Times reported, and Navarro confirmed he authored a pro-tariff memo under that name in 2019. (There was no evidence that Navarro had used the Ron Vara pseudonym in direct connection with Trump's 2025 tariff announcements, but he remained an economic adviser to Trump and publicly defended the 2025 tariffs under his own name.)
Snopes reached out to the White House seeking confirmation from Navarro himself that Ron Vara is his pseudonym and will update it if we hear back.
The story first broke in October 2019 in the Chronicle of Higher Education. According to the story, the pseudonym was spotted by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, a professor emeritus at the Australian National University, who couldn't find any information on Vara despite how frequently Navarro quoted him, which he did as early as 2001 and in at least six books, "usually as an epigraph before a chapter." Snopes examined one of Navarro's books, "Death by China," and found he quoted Vara twice.
The Chronical of Higher Education's reporter, Tom Bartlett, spoke to two of Navarro's co-authors. One was aware of the pseudonym and acknowledged it as Navarro's "alter ego," while the other said he was not aware that Vara didn't exist and did not approve of including a fictional person in the book. Navarro didn't speak on the record for the story, but said in a statement that Ron Vara was a "whimsical device and pen name I've used throughout the years for opinions and purely entertainment value, not as a source of fact."
Not long after the discovery, in December 2019, The New York Times reported that Vara was back. At the time, the Trump administration was negotiating with China to see if the two countries could avoid additional tariffs. Navarro was not a fan, and according to the New York Times story, published a memo offering a defense of the tariffs under the name Ron Vara. A full copy of the memo was not available online, so Snopes reached out to the New York Times journalist to request one.
However, the memo doesn't seem to be in question. The New York Times spoke to Navarro for the story and reported that he confirmed the authenticity of Ron Vara's memo. The story also noted it was "unclear" how widely the memo was shared.
There is no evidence that Navarro had used the Ron Vara pseudonym in order to defend Trump's tariffs in 2025, though Navarro did make appearances on CNN and Fox News defending the tariff policies.