Donald Trump plans to create a National Trade Council inside the White House to oversee industrial policy and is appointing a China hawk and one of the architects of the populist economic message to run the new group.

Mr Trump has chosen Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist, to head the NTC, the Financial Times has learnt. The author of books such as Death by China and Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World has for years warned that the US is engaged in an economic war with China and should adopt a more aggressive stance — a message that the president-elect sold to voters across the US during his campaign.

“I read one of Peter’s books on America’s trade problems years ago and was impressed by the clarity of his arguments and thoroughness of his research,” Mr Trump said. “He has presciently documented the harms inflicted by globalism on American workers, and laid out a path forward to restore our middle class.”