The water crisis in Flint in the US state of Michigan was a direct result of the free trade policies championed by Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the past quarter century, says Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The water crisis in Flint in the US state of Michigan was a direct result of the free trade policies championed by Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the past quarter century, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told a rally.

"This is the catastrophe that happens when [we] take care of every country except for our own," Trump said in Canton in the US state of Ohio on Wednesday. "It used to be cars were made in Flint and you couldn't drink the water in Mexico. Now cars are made in Mexico and you can't drink the water in Flint."

Fourteen million people had left the US labor force since Barack Obama became US president in January 2009 and the US national debt had almost doubled to close to $20 trillion during the same time, Trump pointed out.

"NAFTA [the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement] has killed us, our stupid politicians have killed us and we are going to turn it around… I'm running to reverse these policies," Trump said.

Trump repeated his promise that if elected, on his first day in office he would order a review of all federal regulations issued over the previous eight years and all needless job killing regulations would be abolished.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s husband, former US president Bill Clinton, signed the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. Opponents say that NAFTA, which came into force in 1994, has cost the United States millions of jobs and has decimated the US economic infrastructure.