Donald Trump Announces an ‘American Desk’ to Promote ‘America First’ Trade Deals

Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he will consolidate all trade policy under one “American Desk” if he’s elected president, in order to promote “America First” trade deals.

“We are living through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world,” Trump stated during his afternoon rally in Delaware, Ohio on Thursday — a key battleground state where he is slightly leading his opponent Hillary Clinton. “A Trump Administration is going to renegotiate NAFTA, stand up to foreign cheating, and stop the jobs from leaving our country.”

The Republican nominee continued:

I also have another major announcement I am going to make today that concerns manufacturing in the United States, and how we are going to bring jobs back to Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and all across this great nation.

American trade policy is currently mismanaged by dozens of competing bureaucracies spread across the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, State and Treasury Department and the U.S. Trade Representative.

In my administration, all trade policymaking will be consolidated in one Office. It will report to an American Desk and it will be located inside the Department of Commerce. The mission of the American Desk will be to protect the economic interests of the American worker, and the national interests of the United States.

It’s going to be America First.

Trump told his supporters that Ohio lost one in four manufacturing jobs since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed by President Bill Clinton and that the United States currently has an $800 billion trade deficit.