DES MOINES, Iowa — Donald J. Trump, a billionaire and currently the front-running 2016 GOP presidential candidate, made the case exclusively to Breitbart News on Saturday that the only way to stop Obamatrade is to elect him President of the United States.
Obamatrade is the combination of and intersection between the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which passed Congress last year and greases the skids for the congressional approval of various trade deals by lowering U.S. Senate vote thresholds from 60 votes to 51 votes and killing the ability of Congress to amend those deals, and those various trade deals.
Perhaps the most egregious of those globalist trade deals is the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 5,544 page Pacific Rim trade deal that creates a new global governance commission that jeopardizes U.S. sovereignty, but there are at least two other trade deals that are part of Obamatrade: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).
“Our leaders have negotiated terrible deals that are bleeding this country dry,” Trump said in a statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News. “The TPP is another terrible one-sided deal that rewards offshoring and enriches other countries at our expense. I will stop Hillary’s Obamatrade in its tracks, bringing millions of new voters into the Republican Party. We will move manufacturing jobs back to the United States and we will Make American Great Again.”
His campaign, in comments accompanying his statement to Breitbart News, made clear that Trump’s election to the presidency is the only way voters can stop Obamatrade. The Trump campaign said:
Today, Donald J. Trump addressed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obama’s horrible trade deal that sends more jobs offshore and threatens American sovereignty. Unfortunately, this awful deal is supported by too many Republican politicians, including those running for President. A Trump Presidency is the only guaranteed way to keep America out of this disastrous trade deal. The TPP allows our ‘trading partners’ to manipulate currency, hammer American manufacturing and sends more jobs overseas. And it surrenders U.S. power to foreign bureaucrats and transnational corporations. The other candidates in the Republican race have supported both the TPP and Obama’s ‘Fast Track’ to ram it through Congress. The grossly incompetent Hillary Clinton even hailed the catastrophic TPP as the ‘Gold Standard’ of trade deals.
The statement links to several major news organization pieces, including a Wall Street Journal op-ed from now House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) supporting Obamatrade before Cruz eventually flipped against it; a Breitbart News article detailing the controversial stance of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in support of Obamatrade previously, while Rubio is now taking no position until after most of the presidential primaries; and a CNN piece showing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton previously calling it a “gold standard” of trade deals.
“Our trade deficit with Mexico and Canada exploded from less than $20 billion to nearly $200 billion after NAFTA,” the Trump campaign continued in their statement to Breitbart News. “Our trade deficit with Korea exploded $12 billion since the 2012 Korean deal. The loss of manufacturing has been soul-crushing for American families: these are not just lost jobs, but a lost way of life.”
That part of the statement links to an Economic Policy Institute study on how Obamatrade policies harm American workers’ wages and job prospects.
It’s worth noting that Trump and his campaign making this argument, that electing him president is the only way to stop Obamatrade’s enactment, is backed up by one of Obamatrade’s biggest GOP supporters. Now former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who lost his re-election bid in 2014 because of his controversial stance in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens to now Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), was quoted while attending the Davos meetings with the world’s financial elite recently as saying he thinks if Trump is elected president, Obamatrade is finished.
“Unfortunately I do think that if there were to be a Trump administration, the casualty would likely be trade,” Cantor, who is now vice chairman of Moelis & Company, said at Davos. “That’s a very serious prospect for the world.”
Trump is currently battling it out to the finish here in Iowa in what appears ready to be a photo finish in Monday’s caucuses as he, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) jockey for position in the final couple of days.
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