Donald Trump dumps on free trade's 'rape of our country' in Pennsylvania address

Washington: Junking decades of Republican orthodoxy, Donald Trump struck out for the White House on Tuesday from Pennsylvania with a vow to shred controversial global trade agreements – which he depicted as the continuing "rape of our country".

By day's end, the US political landscape was not unlike that of Britain in the wake of its Brexit referendum, where both major parties are embroiled in internecine war in the wake of a stunning vote to quit the European Union, which Trump referenced in a speech in Pennsylvania as "our friends in Britain recently [voting] to take back control of their country".

Trump's condemnation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) provoked counter-attacks from the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, both of which traditionally support Republican candidates.

Abandoning foundational GOP support for free trade and opposition to tariffs as he positioned himself to the left of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on trade and jobs, Trump found an unlikely ally in Bernie Sanders who, still refusing to quit the race for the Democratic nomination, used a New York Times op-ed to warn that the British decision "to turn their backs on the EU and a globalised economy that is failing them and their children" could happen in the US.

It didn't matter that Sanders argued Trump was not fit to be president; because neither did he argue that Clinton was fit for the job - he simply didn't mention her.

Quoting global and American statistics on wealth distribution, wages and poverty, Sanders declared: "Let's be clear – the global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change."

Turbo-charged by the Brexit vote, Trump laid out a seven-point plan which he claimed would boost domestic jobs, withdraw from the TPP and renegotiate NAFTA – from which he would also withdraw if Mexico and Canada did not concede new terms.

Singling out China as a currency manipulator on whom he'd impose punitive tariffs, he argued: "Now it's time for American workers to take back their future … on trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, we're going to put America first again; we're going to make America wealthy again."

Rejecting Republican conventional wisdom that countries benefit economically through imports, Trump argued that globalisation had left "millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache". To support his argument, Trump provided 128 footnotes in his prepared speech and relied on research from a left-leaning think tank, the Economic Policy Institute.

Invoking Sanders' rhetoric from the Democratic primaries, Trump warned: "People who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge, nothing is going to change."

Pitting his hard-core nationalist outlook against inevitable betrayal by a President Clinton, he denounced her policies as those of "a leadership class that worships globalism".

Even as Trump spoke, he was challenged by the US Chamber of Commerce, which tweeted: "Setting things straight: NAFTA has not been a disaster for the US."

Linking to its web page, it added: "You heard from Trump on trade, here's what you really need to know."

The chamber also dismissed Trump's policies as likely to lead to "higher prices, fewer jobs and a weaker economy".

But as with much of what Trump says, his pitch in a Pennsylvania factory was at odds with his own position in the reasonably recent past – in 2005, blogging on a website associated with his now defunct Trump University, he said: "We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs – how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses. But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it's not always a terrible thing."

And it remains to be seen whether Trump wants his Tuesday speech to be remembers by all voters – or just those in Pennsylvania, which traditionally leans Democratic but which has suffered a loss of traditional manufacturing jobs and which is one of a handful of states that he has to pick up to counter Clinton's improving chances in swing states like Florida and Colorado.

According to an analysis produced by The New York Times, Pittsburgh had lost most of its steel working jobs before NAFTA was thought of – and while Trump might win the support of the 5100 steel workers dislocated since 1990, it was moot as to whether he'd pick up the votes of those in 66,000 new jobs that had been created in health care alone in the same period.

Like the British Brexiteers, Trump's offering is outlandish – the historical reality is that US manufacturing jobs peaked at 38 per cent of all jobs around World War II and today they represent just 8.5 per cent of the total. It's a cruel pipedream to promise to bring back those jobs in those numbers.

Referring to the Brexit decision, the Sanders op-ed recounts stories of his visits to 46 states which "on too many occasions were painful realities that the political and media establishment fail to recognise".

He wrote: "In the last 15 years, nearly 60,000 factories in this country have closed and more than 4.8 million well-paid manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Much of this is related to disastrous trade agreements that encourage corporations to move to low-wage countries."

Sanders says that despite big increases in productivity and adjusted for inflation, the median male American worker today was making $US726 ($983) less than he did in 1973; and his female equivalent was making $US1154 ($1563) less than she did in 2007.

Clinton surrogate and Ohio senator Sherrod Brown hit back: "With all of his personal experience profiting from making products overseas, Trump is the perfect expert to talk about outsourcing," and rattled off a list of Trump goods, including suits and picture frames. "We know just in my state alone, where Donald Trump could have gone to make these things."

Here’s one of his shirts—made in Bangladesh: https://t.co/GBx8oJhE6W pic.twitter.com/2jeNO3NDbq— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 28, 2016

And as Trump spoke, Clinton tweeted a close-up image of the collar of a shirt from the Donald J Trump Signature Collection, saying: "Trump's speaking about outsourcing right now. Here's one of his shirts – made in Bangladesh."