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News > World

Trump Says if Elected, US May Leave NAFTA

  • Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a speech at Alumisourse, a metals recycling facility, in Monessen, Pennsylvania, June 28, 2016.

    Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a speech at Alumisourse, a metals recycling facility, in Monessen, Pennsylvania, June 28, 2016. | Photo: Reuters

Published 28 June 2016
Opinion

Trump ostensibly used his speech to appeal to working class voters, criticizing current U.S. trade policy.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, on Tuesday, saying that it is damaging to the U.S.

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"I'm going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers,” Trump said while speaking at an aluminium factory in Monessen, Pennsylvania, as part of his campaigning on trade targeting working-class voters.

"If they do not agree to a renegotiation, then I will submit notice under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal.”

The three-way trade deal with Mexico, the U.S. and Canada was signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994, which ultimately gutted the U.S. manufacturing sector while also further impoverishing Mexicans. Trump has recently threatened increasing tariffs on a number of goods if elected, including cars imported from Mexico to the U.S., as a way of discouraging companies from moving jobs across the Mexican border.

“Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy. I used to be one of them. Hate to say it, but I used to be one. But it’s left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache,” Trump said, who is also a member of the financial elite.

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It comes ahead of Wednesday’s so called “Three Amigos” Summit in Ottawa where the three NAFTA partners are expected to discuss trade in the wake of the U.K. Brexit from the European Union and rising sentiments against free trade.

President Barack Obama on a number of occasions said that he would renegotiate the NAFTA agreement during his campaigning for president in 2008. Since elected, he never did.

Trump also criticized international trade with China, and the yet to be ratified Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, calling it a “death blow for American manufacturing."

Trump said that Hillary Clinton supported the TPP while she was serving as secretary of state under Obama, but does not opposes now she is running for president.

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