Trump ad hammers Clinton on trade

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is spotlighting his populist trade appeal in a new TV ad that blames the Clintons for the ruin of American manufacturing.

“Factories closed, because of bad trade deals pushed by the Clintons that sent our jobs to other countries,” a voice says in the ad over footage of shuttered factories.

{mosads}The ad, titled “Deals,” will air in the battlegrounds of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all states that have suffered as heavy manufacturing jobs have moved to countries with cheaper labor.

Trump, who is badly outgunned by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on the airwaves, hopes he’ll win over economically suffering voters, including disaffected Democrats, by hammering the Clintons over their support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Trump’s team blames this trade deal, signed during the Bill Clinton administration, for mass job losses across the industrial Midwest.

“The Clintons have influenced every bad trade deal over the past 20+ years,” Trump’s senior policy adviser, Peter Navarro, said in an emailed statement.

“From NAFTA to [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] to shipping our jobs offshore to China, this is the economic disaster of our time,” he said.