Trump says he’ll seek better trade deals
Seven-point plan also includes threat to leave NAFTA
MONESSEN, Pa. — Donald Trump, who has ridden a wave of anti-globalism to capture the GOP nomination, made a series of pledges and threats Tuesday aimed at punishing China and divorcing the U.S. from trade deals he blames for the loss of manufacturing jobs.
The speech, delivered from a Teleprompter at the Alumisource factory in Monessen, was one of the most traditional he has given since entering the presidential race a year ago. After battling with fact-checkers for much of the past week, Trump included 128 footnotes in his prepared remarks.
“Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy,” Trump said from the heart of the battered Rust Belt region, where voters embraced him during the GOP primaries. “I hate to say it, but I used to be one of them.”
Trump’s speech took aim mostly at politicians, with little regard to the role mechanization and corporate outsourcing — including some by his own companies — have played in the decline of America’s industrial base.
“As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton ‘voted for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions of jobs,’ ” Trump said, noting his alignment on the issue with Clinton’s former rival.
Trump’s seven-point plan also made an overt threat to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush and supported by President Bill Clinton, who also campaigned in Congress for enabling legislation, which he also signed.
“A Trump administration will change our failed trade policies, and I mean quickly,” Trump said.
The plan calls for withdrawing from NAFTA unless the other parties agree to renegotiate and give the U.S. “a better deal by a lot.”
It also calls for withdrawing from the massive Pacific trade deal in the works, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Clinton pushed as secretary of state but now says she would not sign. It also calls for punishing other countries for trade and currency violations, with a heavy emphasis on China, which Trump would label a currency manipulator.