US not a 'piggy bank', wants free and fair reciprocate trade, says Trump

President Donald Trump has called for a free and reciprocal trade, claiming that the US was like a "piggy bank that everybody was robbing".

Amidst intensive trade negotiations with countries like Mexico and Canada and a trade war like conditions with China and EU, Trump said, For too long we watched, and we waited, and we saw as other countries stole our jobs, cheated our workers and gutted our industry.

The United States of America was the piggy bank that everybody was robbing, Trump told his supporters in Montana, alleging that in many cases America's allies were worse than its enemies.

We opened our country to their goods, but they put up massive barriers to keep our products and our goods the hell out of their country because they didn't want that competition. And that's not free trade, that's stupid trade. We're not going to do that. We don't do that anymore, he asserted.

"We have to have fair and reciprocal. We need reciprocal. They charge a 50 per cent tax. We charge a 50 per cent tax. Then we say, look, let's bring it to nothing, or I don't care one way or the other. Do whatever you want. Then, I'll have people complaining, he said.

Trump alleged that there are countries that are ripping off the US for years.

And then, when I say, well, look we're going to put tariffs on there because they have been ripping us. We have trade deficits. They have surpluses. That would be unbelievable, Trump said.
 

On the trade war with China, Trump said the US is going to win this.

Who the hell can lose $500 billion then you want to do something about it and you get attacked. Oh, that's not nice. That's not free trade. The war was lost on trade many years ago, he said.

"You know when they were saying not a free trade. I said no, no. The war was lost but now we're going to win it and because we have all the cards, he said.

Trump said if the trade deficit is knocked down by 25 per cent, America's GDP will grow by one per cent.

Do you know that if we knocked down the trade deficit, right, the trade deficit by just a little bit, 25 per cent, we can do that easily. That's easy. If we do that, we pick up one point in GDP, he said.

That's three trillion dollars and that's 10 million jobs. That's just 25 per cent. We pick up one point. And speaking of GDP, remember when I'd say it's going to go to 3 per cent pretty quickly and all of this? The Atlanta Fed just predicted 4.8 per cent, he added.