Donald Trump gave a press conference Tuesday where he excoriated Hillary and Bill Clinton’s support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, stating it has created billion-dollar trade imbalances and hurt American workers. Oddly enough, the likely Republican nominee found support from libertarian and socialist icons Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders.
In his speech, Trump said that NAFTA was the worst trade agreements in the history of the United States and betrayed American workers. The billionaire said he would renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for workers, and if Canada and Mexico refused, he would have the U.S. pull out of the trade deal.
That statement sent shock waves as economists, pundits, and establishment forces in Washington scrambled to defend NAFTA.
Another anti-establishment former presidential candidate supported Trump’s statements. Paul tweeted that the billionaire was right and the U.S. should abandon the free trade agreement.
Yes Donald Trump, We Should Get Out Of NAFTAhttps://t.co/GrN7tjgFvA
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) June 28, 2016
Paul has said repeatedly in the past that he supports free trade, but NAFTA serves special interests and lobbyists instead.
“Our problem is these managed trade agreements like the WTO, NAFTA, and a plan for a North American Union, these are the kinds of movements that I think are very detrimental to our national sovereignty, I don’t think it helps our workers, and in combination with our monetary policy we are now exporting our jobs,” Paul said on the Lou Dobbs Show in 2008.
On Paul’s website, a staff writer for the former presidential candidate said that libertarians would advise Trump not to renegotiate the terms and just remove America from NAFTA.
Another old, principled, former presidential candidate to agree with Trump is Sen. Sanders (D-Vt.) who wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that Democrats needed to wake up and abandon these free trade agreements that were hurting workers.
“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,” Sanders wrote in The Times. “Much of this is related to disastrous trade agreements that encourage corporations to move to low-wage countries.”
While Sanders is principled in his ideas, he’s still married to the football of politics and took the time to slam Trump even though he agreed with Trump on trade instead of Clinton.
Despite attacking Trump in The Times, he sounded like the Republican frontrunner during several campaign stops in Pennsylvania where he said he would renegotiate NAFTA.
The anti-establishment left, right, and wherever Trump falls have a mission to unravel NAFTA. If only they could put partisan differences aside, they might actually do it.
