Trump Senior Policy Adviser: Trade An Issue of ‘National Security’

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally February 10,
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Protecting the nation’s manufacturing base is essential to national security, the senior policy adviser for GOP front-runner Donald Trump argued Friday on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily.

“Trade is an issue of not just economic security but national security. As a country it is in our vital national security interest to have a strong and vibrant manufacturing base,” Stephen Miller told host Stephen K. Bannon. “You cannot be a country that is entirely safe and secure and be an entirely services-based economy.”

With the upcoming primary in South Carolina, Miller said that trade agreements have harmed the Palmetto State.

“South Carolina is a state that has been really devastated by NAFTA and other trade policies,” Miller said.

If you look at, for instance, the textile industry. It was once one of the great textile producing manufacturing bases in the whole world. Now there’s still textile production in South Carolina but so many factories were just destroyed, just decimated – entire ways of life destroyed by NAFTA and other trade policies.

According to Miller, Trump is the only candidate in the GOP field who has explicitly and historically been pro-American manufacturing. He argued that Trump’s opposition to trade deals like the the Trans-Pacific Partnership for voters, and in particular South Carolinians, make him the best candidate to protect American jobs and companies.

“Do you believe as a country that we should have manufacturing, that ‘Made in the USA’ should be not just a slogan, but a reality for millions of people,” Miller said.

And if the answer to that question is yes, there is one candidate who across the years has been consistent in believing that our economic system should be structured so that American companies can thrive, can produce, can grow and that the amazing American workers in factories and plants across the United States can keep their jobs and continue producing what they have been trained to do.

Hear the interview:

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