Businessman Donald Trump says there’s at least one subject where he can find some common ground with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont: trade.
“I was watching him and he talked about trade and he was talking about how we’re getting ripped off left and right on trade, and I [said], you know, I think I can take that paragraph and just use it in my speeches,” Mr. Trump said Monday via phone on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It’s what I’m saying — it’s one of my big things.”
Both Mr. Trump, who has been leading recent polls on the 2016 GOP presidential field, and Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who is contending for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, have come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal being negotiated between the United States and 11 other countries including Japan, Australia and Canada.
“We’re getting killed by China, we’re getting killed — now here’s the difference between Bernie Sanders and myself: I negotiate. I will make great deals with China; he can’t do that,” Mr. Trump said. “In other words, he’s incapable of doing that. But he knows the problem, at least. He’s not going to be able to anything about it, but he does know the problem, and if you look at his words on trade and my words on trade, man — I was just looking at it yesterday, actually. I said, that’s pretty close, you know, so in terms of that, we’re very close.”
Mr. Trump said Mr. Sanders, who has emerged as a chief rival of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 2016 Democratic front-runner, has “struck a nerve.”
“And I’ve struck, I think, an even bigger nerve on the Republican side and the conservative side, and it’s been amazing,” he said. “The response I’ve had is amazing, and I guess they just announced a new poll that my numbers actually went up, so that’s good.”
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