President Trump said he hopes Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) supporters back him in the 2020 presidential election against presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden because the two agree that the United States’ trade policy must put American workers before corporate interests.
During a press briefing on Wednesday, Trump welcomed Sanders’ supporters to his re-election campaign after the self-described democratic socialist suspended his campaign — leaving Biden as the presumptive Democrat nominee for president.
Trump said he has long held the same positions on trade as Sanders, opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) — policies that have cost the U.S. five million manufacturing jobs. Trump said:
I hope that a lot of Bernie Sanders’ people, just like they did last time. We got a tremendous percentage of Bernie people, and I think they voted for me largely because of trad, because Bernie and I agree on trade. We agree that the United States has been ripped off by virtually every country they do business with. The difference is I’ve done a lot about it and am doing more about it.
Bernie Sanders’ people are big believers on what I’m saying on trade, and I got a lot of them in the last election, and that surprised a lot of people, but it didn’t surprise me. Those are great people. They are great people.
While Trump has brokered a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico to replace NAFTA, Biden has a long record of supporting NAFTA, free trade with China, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which the president revoked.
Despite China’s control over nearly all drugs imported to the U.S., Biden has repeatedly claimed that the communist country is not a threat to Americans.
As vice president, Biden led the campaign on behalf of the Obama administration to pass TPP, which would have made it even easier for multinational corporations to offshore American jobs by forcing America’s working and middle class to compete against Vietnam’s workforce. Workers in Vietnam earn as little as 60 cents an hour sometimes.
Biden’s TPP would have allowed corporations in TPP-countries to bid for U.S. federal government contracts, a provision that would have used American taxpayer money to pay corporations overseas to create jobs in other countries.
Likewise, as Breitbart News exposed, in November 1993, Biden claimed that NAFTA would increase jobs and production for American workers employed at Chrysler’s Newark, Delaware, plant by opening up the Mexican market.
Years later, in 2007, those American workers at the Newark Chrysler plant were laid off as the plant closed down. At its height, about 5,700 American workers were employed there. When the plant closed, around 700 to 1,100 Americans were left without jobs.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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