Donald Trump speaks Tuesday during a policy speech at Alumisource in Monessen, Pennsylvania. | Getty Trump trashes GOP trade agenda The presumptive Republican nominee's speech, a play for blue-collar support, isn't sitting well with party elites.

Donald Trump doubled down on economic populism and protectionism in a speech Tuesday, effectively taking conservative orthodoxy on free trade and tossing it onto the trash pile rising behind him.

Promising to tear up existing trade deals — from the Bill Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement to the recently negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership — and to punish China and other countries that he argued are dealing unfairly with the U.S., the presumptive GOP presidential nominee called for a new era of American economic independence.


Cloaking himself in the anti-globalist garb of British Brexit voters and rising nationalist movements beyond the U.S., Trump blasted Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, for selling out American workers to “global elites” by supporting free trade.

“This wave of globalization has wiped out totally, totally our middle class," said Trump, standing in front of stacks of compressed metal on the floor of Alumisource, a plant south of Pittsburgh that provides aluminum scrap and other raw materials to the aluminum and steel industries. "It doesn't have to be this way. We can turn it around and we can turn it around fast."

In a rare deviation from his prepared remarks, Trump urged voters to reject Clinton’s “policy of fear and her policy of absolute nonsense because it’s not working and it’s grossly incompetent and we can’t take it any longer, and we’re not going to take it any longer.”

But in running to Clinton’s left on trade as part of a pitch to disaffected blue-collar workers in America’s Rust Belt, Trump managed to further alienate mainstream conservatives.

“This speech flies in the face of what Republicans believe about markets and the economy and free trade,” said Tony Fratto, a Republican consultant and former assistant Treasury secretary. “I think it’s going to be much harder for him to consolidate support among Republicans after this speech.

“Richard Trumka could have given that speech,” he continued, referencing the president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s biggest organized labor group.

Amazingly enough, Trump’s speech brought Big Labor and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce together in their opposition to it, with both organizations blasting Trump on Twitter.

“Under Trump’s trade plans, we would see higher prices, fewer jobs and a weaker economy,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce tweeted from its official account, starting a storm of tweets torching Trump during his speech, each of which linked to a page on the organization's website with the headline: “Trump’s Trade Policies Would Make America Recession-Bound Again.”

Trumka, meanwhile, linked to an article reporting on Trump “cheating workers” and pointed out that the candidate vowing to create American jobs produces clothing under his personal brand in foreign countries where labor is cheaper.

Trump, in so emphatically planting this policy flag on trade in the heart of the country’s old industrial core, appears to be laying bare a political calculation: that he believes the older, white voters likely to be receptive to his message are more critical to his White House bid than the class of Republican donors he’s attempting to engage.

“If you run a business, how can you support a candidate who is explicitly saying he's going to tank international trade? This would be disastrous for many of their companies, not to mention our economy,” said Tim Miller, a GOP operative who served as a spokesman for Jeb Bush and an anti-Trump super PAC during the GOP primary.

“Take that speech and hand it to any of the big Republican donors and ask them if they can live with that, and they can’t,” Fratto said. “They couldn’t even mouth the words out loud. He’s actually making Hillary Clinton a more palatable alternative for a lot of Republicans.”

But Trump’s promise to restore manufacturing jobs, in part, by increasing tariffs on goods produced by companies moving jobs overseas, is likely to register with those white, working-class voters who powered his primary campaign.

Asserting that China, not yet part of TPP, would enter the agreement “through the backdoor at a later date,” Trump promised to “appoint the toughest and smartest — and I know them all — trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers.”

He also called for the U.S. to declare its economic independence again. But to do that, he said, requires a reversal of “two of the worst legacies of the Clinton years”: NAFTA and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

He ticked through the economic impact of both policies, calling the former “the worst trade deal in history” and crediting the latter for “the greatest jobs theft in history.”

And he hammered the former secretary of state for not only praising the TPP — which Trump cast as “the greatest danger yet” — but calling it the “gold standard,” a point the Republican National Committee has also seized on, attacking Clinton for backtracking on her support of the deal after she launched her presidential campaign.

Clinton’s primary challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has railed against the TPP and other trade deals. As secretary of state, Clinton advocated for the TPP dozens of times but maintained that she never worked on the deal directly. Last fall, however, Clinton announced during an interview with PBS’ Judy Woodruff that she opposed TPP, noting that she didn’t believe it would meet the high bar she set for it.

“The TPP, as it’s known, would be the death blow for American manufacturing,” Trump said, adding that the deal would undermine America’s economy and independence.

Trump argued that the TPP would create an international commission that would be influenced by Wall Street donors.

“It should be no surprise then that Hillary Clinton, according to Bloomberg, took a ‘leading part in drafting the Trans-Pacific Partnership.’ Please remember that, especially in November,” Trump said. “She praised or pushed the TPP on 45 separate occasions, and even called it the ‘gold standard.’”

“Hillary Clinton was totally for the TPP just a short while ago, but when she saw my stance, which is totally against, she was shamed into saying she would be against it, too,” Trump continued, while boasting that he also shamed Clinton into saying “radical Islamism.”

“But have no doubt that she will immediately approve it if it’s put before her. That is guaranteed. Guaranteed. She will do this just as she’s betrayed American workers for Wall Street and throughout — throughout her career.”

Beyond attacking Clinton, Trump laid out several proposed trade initiatives of his own. His prepared remarks included footnotes and further citations to make his case, and his usual bombast was replaced with footnotes citing news organizations — some of which his campaign has banned from its events, including POLITICO and The Washington Post — and specific sections of trade acts, including the Trade Act of 1974 and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

Trump said he would order the Commerce secretary to identify trade violations foreign countries are using to harm American workers and direct agencies to use all legal tactics to end such practices, as well as renegotiate the terms of NAFTA “to get a better deal — by a lot, not just a little, by a lot — for our workers.”

“And if they don’t agree to a renegotiation, which they might not because they’re so used to having their own way — not with Trump, they won’t have their own way — then I will submit under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal.”

The real estate mogul would tell the Treasury secretary to “label China a currency manipulator” and vow that any nation that devalues their currency “to take unfair advantage of the United States — which is many countries — will be met with sharply, and that includes tariffs and taxes.”

The billionaire also said that he would tell the U.S. trade representative to bring cases against China — both in America and with the WTO. The U.S. and China have a complex, sometimes tense relationship, and past U.S. presidents have tread lightly around imposing retaliatory tariffs against China because of the two nations’ economic co-dependence. Trump, however, once suggested placing a 45 percent tariff on imported Chinese goods.

“China’s unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO, and I intend to enforce those rules and regulations, and basically I intend to enforce the agreements for all countries, including China,” Trump said.

But if China doesn’t halt its “illegal activities” — which Trump noted includes theft of American trade secrets — he said, while emphasizing that he loves saying this, “I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs.”

Trump also targeted globalization, blaming politicians for “aggressively pursuing” a policy that cost Americans jobs and benefited the financial elite while leaving millions of workers “with nothing but poverty and heartache.”

“Our politicians took away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families,” Trump said, while faulting globalization for wiping out the middle class.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, Trump said.

“We can turn it all around — and we can turn it around fast,” he said. “But if we're going to deliver real change, we're going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pursued by powerful corporations, media elites and political dynasties. The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything — and say anything — to keep things exactly as they are.”

Those same people, Trump continued, are backing Clinton “because they know as long as she is in charge nothing’s going to change.” Inner cities will remain poor, factories will stay closed, borders will continue to be left open and special interests will maintain their control, Trump said.

“Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small — and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future,” Trump said. “My campaign has the opposite message.”

Trump again boasted that he was right about the Brexit vote. The United Kingdom on Friday voted to leave the European Union, but Trump will say Britons voted to “take back control of their economy, politics and borders.”

“I was on the right side of that issue, as you know — with the people — I was there. I said it was going to happen. I felt it,” Trump said. “While Hillary, as always, stood with the elites, and both she and President Obama predicted that one — and many others — totally wrong. “ Now it's time for the American people to take back their future. We’re gonna take it back. That’s the choice we face. We can either give in to Hillary Clinton's campaign of fear or we can choose to believe again in America.”