Navarro seemed rather hot to blame China for allowing the culture of counterfeiting to undermine the credibility of American brands, but completely ignored the role of American business in allowing these conditions to arise. American
companies are the ones who made the decision to radically alter their supply chains for more profitability and less oversight, to send their manufacturing overseas to be done by people who have no interest in building safe or good products for us here in America, and to pass those branded products off as the same as what Americans once made for ourselves. Those same companies are the ones most able to uphold the integrity of their brands, and as such should bear the primary responsibility for doing so. The company I work for is very concerned with the quality of products we purchase from our suppliers and those we sell to our customers. Why aren't the global players even more interested in doing the same thing, given the greater amount of risk in the environments where they operate?

This is a failure of US policy: not a failure to effectively boss China around as Navarro seems to suggest, but failure to affix appropriate liability to the dollar-eyed business "innovators" failing to police their manufacturing operations and supply chains.

Navarro is right to stress the seriousness of the problem, but I'm not sure his idea of a solution is the best, the most realistic, or even the easiest to pursue.