(Adds Trump remarks in Bangor, Maine, Chamber of Commerce
campaign donations)
By Ginger Gibson
WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) - Presidential candidate
Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce's scathing criticism of his stance on trade,
highlighting divisions within the Republican Party that threaten
unity ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
At a campaign rally in Maine on Wednesday, Trump called the
nation's largest business association "controlled totally by
various groups of people who don't care about you whatsoever."
He said new trade deals should be negotiated because foreign
countries are taking advantage of America.
"Every country that we do business with us look at us as the
stupid people with the penny bank," Trump said Wednesday at the
rally in Bangor, Maine.
The Washington-based lobbying group, which represents the
United States' largest companies and business interests, is
typically a reliable backer of Republican policies.
But on Tuesday it took issue with Trump's vocal opposition
to trade deals, calling his proposals "dangerous" ideas that
would push the United States into another recession.
Trump said the Chamber's argument that his policies would
cause a trade war were incorrect because the United States was
already at a deficit.
"We're already losing the trade war, we lost the trade war,"
Trump said. "Nothing can happen worse than is happening now."
In speeches on Tuesday, Trump called for renegotiating or
scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with
Canada and Mexico, calling it a job killer, and reiterated
opposition to the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership among the
United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries. He also
lambasted China's trade and currency policies.
The Chamber has consistently backed trade deals.
The public squabbling between the presumptive Republican
nominee and the business group was unusual, one of a series of
reminders that Trump still struggles to unite his party behind
his campaign. The Republicans and many business leaders tend to
share policy goals and work in lockstep, and many business
leaders have traditionally been big donors to Republican
candidates.
So far, the Chamber's political action committee has donated
$134,000 to federal candidates or their committees, with
$127,500 of that total going to Republicans, according to U.S.
government campaign finance records.
Billionaire Republican donor Paul Singer, who bankrolled an
effort to try to defeat Trump during the campaign's nominating
phase, said on Wednesday that a Trump presidency and his trade
positions would almost certainly lead to a global depression.
"The most impactful of the economic policies that I recall
him coming out for are these anti-trade policies," Singer said
during a panel discussion at the Aspen Ideas Festival in
Colorado, according to CNBC.
But opposing trade deals has proven a winning strategy for
Trump among voters concerned about the loss of manufacturing
jobs.
Art Laffer, an economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan
who supports Trump, said he did not like the tone of Trump's
speech on Tuesday but thought it was an improvement over his
past comments on trade.
"It's not terribly alarming to me," Laffer said. "I didn't
see any 45 percent tariffs across the board. ...
"I saw negotiating better trade deals rather than throwing
away all the trade deals we have now. He points out the flaws in
these trades, and that's all true," Laffer said. "I don't like
the tone of it, but I dislike the tone less today than I did
three weeks ago."
Peter Navarro, a Trump trade policy adviser, defended the
candidate's position.
"Here's the central point to understand: The White House has
been utterly and completely soft on China's illegal trade
practices," said Navarro, a professor at the University of
California, Irvine. "The status quo is the worst of all possible
worlds for the United States."
Trump also took fire from for his positions on trade from
Democrats.
In a call organized by rival Hillary Clinton's presidential
campaign, U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a former
businessman and tech entrepreneur, said that while the country
needed to do a better job protecting workers, more resources
should be put into training them for a new economy.
He also noted that it was unusual to see a Republican
standard-bearer and the Chamber divide.
"You've really got a special circumstance when the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce" responded to Trump's economic plan with a
"full-fledged onslaught," Warner said. "No one could have
predicted this kind of election season."
Clinton held no public campaign events on Wednesday but did
announce she would appear next week with President Barack Obama,
the first time this year that he and his former Secretary of
State have campaigned together.
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