President Trump blasted Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s globalist record that has shipped millions of American jobs to Mexico and China over the last three decades.
During a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, Trump detailed Biden’s record on the issue of trade that has led to soaring U.S. trade deficits and, as a result,the gof working and middle class American communities since the mid-1990s.
“Biden was a cheerleader for NAFTA, sending your auto jobs all over the place, but in particular to Mexico,” Trump said. “Mexico is a big auto monster right now.”
“[Biden] voted for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), one of the worst things that ever happened to our country — the best thing that ever happened to China,” Trump continued. “[China was] flatlined and then they joined and went like a rocketship. Thank you very much Joe, great job you did, Joe.”
Trump said Biden helped gut Michigan industries “to finance China’s rise,” eliminating “half of all of Michigan auto manufacturing jobs.”
Michigan, as a result of NAFTA, which Biden supported, lost at least 170,000 jobs from its state economy. Since NAFTA was enacted, about five million American manufacturing jobs and 55,000 manufacturing plants have been eliminated from the U.S. economy.
“Think of it, you lost 50 percent of your jobs because of these guys — it’s [Biden] and his group,” Trump said. “And then he says, ‘Oh we’re going to do this’ … he did nothing. He destroyed your industry.”
“In 2016, Michigan voted to fire this corrupt political establishment and you elected an outsider as president who is finally putting America first,” Trump said, referencing his win against Hillary Clinton four years ago in the state.
Broken NATFA Promises
Though Biden has glossed over his globalist trade record this election cycle, the damage that free trade has had on the American economy continues to be felt today.
In November 1993, Biden delivered a speech on the Senate floor supporting NAFTA, claiming the free trade deal would help drive up production at Chrysler’s Newark, Delaware, plant.
“Chrysler expects to sell 5,000 more cars to Mexico from their Newark, DE, plant by the end of the decade,” Biden said. “Without NAFTA, Chrysler will have to manufacture more cars in Mexico to meet the requirements of pre-NAFTA laws.”
In 2007, those American workers at the Newark Chrysler plant were laid off as the plant closed down. At its height, about 5,700 workers were employed there. When the plant closed, around 700 to 1,100 Americans were left without jobs.
TPP Support
Biden’s support for such policies did not end when he supported NAFTA, China’s entering the WTO, and normalizing U.S. trade relations with China. As vice president, Biden pushed for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Trump ended in the first week of his presidency.
In the second term of the Obama administration, Biden touted the TPP as a necessary step for the U.S. in order to counter China. At the same time, auto workers were whipping up opposition to the TPP with union leadership blasting the deal, protests, and reports detailing what the free trade agreement would do to their communities.
A report issued by the AFL-CIO detailed how the TPP would “seriously undermine the future of domestic manufacturing production and employment.” The TPP, the union said, would have eliminated at least 330,000 American manufacturing jobs and driven up the U.S. trade deficit in manufacturing, automobiles, and auto parts by almost $56 billion.
The TPP’s most detrimental impact perhaps would have been the deal’s incentives for multinational corporations to offshore American jobs to foreign countries — forcing American workers to compete against workers in Malaysia and Vietnam who are often paid slave wages.
A report by Public Citizen states:
The TPP would gut Buy American policies that recycle U.S. tax dollars back into our economy to create U.S. jobs. The TPP would require us to waive Buy American procurement preferences so that any company operating in a TPP country, including all of the Chinese firms in Vietnam, would have to get equal access to U.S. government contracts. That means offshoring our tax dollars to create jobs abroad.
Despite opposition from union workers, especially auto workers, Biden said last year that while he would not “rejoin” the TPP, he would “renegotiate” the free trade deal.
Greenlighting China
Helping foreign countries flourish at the expense of America’s working and middle class runs deep in the Biden family.
Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, once sat on the board of a Chinese government-funded private equity firm that helped China-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) buy out Michigan-based Henniges Automotive for $600 million. The Obama-Biden administration approved the acquisition despite AVIC having been sanctioned five times since 1993.
While the deal was finalized and afterward, executives at Henniges announced manufacturing expansions in China, Mexico, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and South America.
Similarly, in July 2009 while Biden was vice president, General Motors shuttered its Wilmington, Delaware, plant that once employed 5,200 American workers. Nearly 600 Americans were laid off with the plant’s closure.
Biden, at the time, claimed to have brokered a deal that included Fisker Automotives buying the plant with a taxpayer-funded loan. The deal never came to fruition and in 2014, Fisker Automotive was acquired at a bankruptcy auction by the China-based Wanxiang Group Corporation. Wanxiang has close ties to the Chinese government.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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