Trump vows to rip up trade deals and confront China

OHIO — Mr Donald Trump has vowed to rip up international trade deals and start an unrelenting offensive against Chinese economic practices, framing his contest with Hillary Clinton as a choice between hard-edge nationalism and the policies of “a leadership class that worships globalism”.

He also continued to attack the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, likening it in a speech to “rape”.

“It’s a harsh word, but that’s what it is — rape of our country,” said Mr Trump at a rally in St Clairsville, Ohio, yesterday.

Earlier in the day, in a trade speech at a Pennsylvania scrap facility, Mr Trump called on the US to follow the political wave that began with the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union.

“Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy, politics and borders,” said Mr Trump. “Now it’s time for the American people to take back their future. We are going to take it back.”

Calling the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta, “the worst trade deal in the history of the country” and the TPP “the greatest danger yet”, Mr Trump said he planned to renegotiate trade deals in order to create jobs across the country and especially in places that formerly produced goods sold in the US and abroad. “It’s time to declare our economic independence once again,” said Mr Trump. “That means voting for Donald Trump.”

Mr Trump also blasted China, and signalled that he was prepared to confront the world’s most populous nation. “I am going to instruct my Treasury Secretary to label China a currency manipulator. Any country that devalues their currency in order to take advantage of the United States will be met with sharply,” said Mr Trump.

China has been a favourite Trump target, and in May, the billionaire invoked the rape metaphor when speaking about the country.

“We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing,” said Mr Trump at a rally in Indiana at the time.

Speaking at Alumisource, a company in Monessen, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Mr Trump cited statistics, statements from America’s founding fathers on trade and specific clauses in pacts, as he sought to turn the page on weeks of campaign turmoil and racial controversy by returning to a core set of economic grievances that have animated his campaign from the start.

He attacked Mrs Clinton for flip-flopping on her past support for the TPP, a trade pact negotiated by the Barack Obama administration, and challenged her to pledge that she would void the agreement in its entirety. Noting Mrs Clinton had backed free-trade agreements such as Nafta in the past, Mr Trump warned, “She will betray you again.”

Mr Trump’s speech was an attack on the economic orthodoxy that has dominated the Republican Party since World War II. It is an article of a faith among establishment Republicans and allied groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce, that trade is good and more trade is better.

Mr Trump, by contrast, has made blistering attacks on trade his primary economic theme.

In his address on Tuesday he rejected the standard view that countries benefit by importing goods, arguing that globalisation helped “the financial elite”, while leaving “millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache”.

It is a critique that has been levelled for years, mainly by a small group of liberal economists who have gained little traction even on the Democratic side. Mr Trump not only embraced their views, but also cited the work of the liberal Economic Policy Institute by name.

Mr Trump, as president, would have significant authority to raise trade barriers, and his speech included his most detailed account to date of his plans to do so, saying that he would pull the US from Nafta if Mexico and Canada did not agree to renegotiate it.

But it is far from clear that any president has the power to reverse globalisation.

Under existing law, Mr Trump could only impose tariffs on specific imports. The most likely effect would be to shift production to other low-cost nations.

Mr Trump’s address opened his first swing-state tour of the general election race. After muddling around the political map since his last Republican rivals withdrew, and veering away from the campaign last week for a trip to Scotland, Mr Trump’s tour this week through Pennsylvania and Ohio was the start of a concerted effort to carve a path to 270 electoral votes on daunting political terrain.

The language and location of Mr Trump’s speech encapsulated his aspirational strategy for the general election: His greatest source of support has been white, working-class men, and his campaign hopes to compete in traditionally Democratic-leaning states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, to offset his deep unpopularity with Hispanic voters in swing states such as Florida and Colorado.

Mr Trump’s speech drew rebuke from two sides: The Clinton campaign attacked his credibility as a critic of free trade and deployed Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a populist Democrat who is viewed as a potential running mate for Mrs Clinton, to accuse Mr Trump of hypocrisy.

“With all of his personal experience profiting from making products overseas, Trump’s the perfect expert to talk about outsourcing,” said Mr Brown, reciting a list of Mr Trump products, from suits to picture frames, that he said were made in other countries.

“We know just in my state alone where Donald Trump could have gone to make these things,” he added.

Mr Trump also drew a cold response from traditionally Republican-leaning interests as well for his heated attacks on international trade agreements. The US Chamber of Commerce, which spends millions of dollars in federal elections, almost entirely in support of Republican candidates, criticised Mr Trump’s speech on Twitter and claimed that his policies would hurt the economy.

“Even under best case scenario, Trump’s tariffs would strip us of at least 3.5 million jobs,” the group wrote in one Twitter message. AGENCIES