Less than a third of registered voters agree with Hillary Clinton’s view of international trade, according to data from the latest national poll by Breitbart News Network and Gravis Marketing.
The poll was conducted following last week’s presidential debate, in which Donald Trump bludgeoned Clinton on the critical issue of trade–and, in particular, her record of supporting NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
During the heated exchange, Clinton attempted to defend her husband’s globalist trade policies of the 1990s, including NAFTA.
“NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country,” Trump said, noting that Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA and that her husband was responsible for the trade agreement.
“And now you want to approve the Trans Pacific Partnership,” Trump added. “You were totally in favor of it and then you heard how I said how bad it was. And if you win, you would approve it. And it would be almost as bad as NAFTA.”
In response to Trump’s attacks, Clinton opted to defend her husband’s trade policies. “Manufacturing went up in the 1990s,” Clinton said– dismissing Trump’s criticism of NAFTA by stating, “Well, that’s your opinion.”
In an October 3rd survey of 1,690 random registered voters across the country, voters were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with Trump’s assertion that NAFTA “is the worst trade deal in modern American history, and that TPP, the TransPacific Partnership, is almost as bad.”
By a nearly two-to-one margin, voters said that they agreed with Trump (50% said they agreed versus 30% who said they disagreed).
Additionally, during the debate, Clinton misrepresented her longstanding support for the TPP, insisting that she had not previously praised the TPP as the “gold standard” of trade deals.
The Associated Press reported that Clinton’s claim was not true– noting that Clinton had, in fact, said that the TPP “set the gold standard in trade agreements.”
Indeed, CNN has reported that Hillary Clinton is on the record for having praised or promoted the TPP at least 45 times.
Previous polling from Breitbart/Gravis in late August found that a plurality of likely voters (46%) said that they do not “trust Hillary Clinton when she says she would oppose the TPP as President.”
By a more than three-to-one margin, voters indicated that they opposed the TPP rather than supported it (38 percent said they oppose the TPP versus only 11 percent who said they supported it).
This polling data is in keeping with other separate polling, which has documented the American electorate’s “across-the-board skepticism” of multinational, so-called “free trade” agreements.
A recent POLITICO Pro-Harvard poll found that by a five-to-one margin, Americans believe that trade policies with other countries have lost American jobs (65% believe our trade policies have lost the U.S. jobs versus only 13% who believe our trade policies have created U.S. jobs). Politico also found that while less than a third of Americans “say they have heard or read anything” about the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, “among those who have heard of it, 63% are opposed.”
Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, said trade continues to be a potent issue in this election.
“From the beginning of his campaign, Trump has tapped into the frustration with trade deals, such as NAFTA and of course, the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” he said.
“People who missed the rise of Trump also missed this frustration with trade deals, which is very serious to the voters in this cycle.”
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