Several influential Wall Street executives have made themselves “unregistered foreign agents” of China, and are helping to pressure the Trump administration into resolving its trade dispute with China, according to a top White House official.

“The mission of these unregistered foreign agents — that's what they are; they're unregistered foreign agents — is to pressure this president into some kind of deal,” Peter Navarro, a top trade policy adviser for President Trump, said Friday.

Navarro is one of the top advocates of a protectionist economic policy within the administration, making him a natural ideological opponent of most countries' economic positions. But his rhetoric at the Center for Strategic and International Studies went further by raising a national security issue and claiming that "globalist billionaires" within the U.S. are working against Trump.

“As part of a Chinese government influence operation, these globalist billionaires are putting a full-court press on the White House in advance of the G20 in Argentina,” he said. “When these unpaid foreign agents engage in this kind of diplomacy, so-called diplomacy, all they do is weaken this president and his negotiating position. No good can come of this.”

The term “unregistered foreign agent” derives from a federal law requiring Americans to inform the U.S. government if they engage in "political activities” on behalf of a foreign power. It has recently been used to prosecute former Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort and business partner Rick Gates for their prior work on behalf of pro-Russia interests in Ukraine.

“The Justice Department has considerably stepped up enforcement of FARA in recent years — something that has become clear to lobbyists and public relations firms in the United States as well as foreign governments and political parties that hire them,” as Lawfare’s David Laufman noted in September.

Navarro suggested that Wall Street's “shuttle diplomacy” would mar the negotiations even if they failed.

“If Wall Street is involved and continues to insinuate itself into these negotiations, there will be a stench, a stench around any deal that’s consummated, because it will have the imprimatur of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street,” he said. “So I would urge these unpaid foreign agents to stand down on this issue.”