NAFTA a sore spot for some Michigan Dems

Associated Press

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich.

Michigan is trickier than it may appear for Hillary Clinton, a Democrat whose party’s presidential nominees have carried the struggling manufacturing hub for decades.

Bernie Sanders beat her in the state’s Democratic primary by railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Republican Donald Trump is more popular with Michigan’s working-class white voters than past GOP candidates, and has pledged to back out of the treaty some blame for the loss of countless Rust Belt jobs.

While Clinton’s history of supporting free trade may not cost her the state, it is costing campaign staff and money to defend its 16 electoral votes.

“It’s an issue that Sanders used to his advantage in the primary and obviously was successful,” said Michigan Democratic organizer Amy Chapman, who was Barack Obama’s state director in 2008 and a senior adviser in 2012. “Obviously, it’s something they need to figure out as they figure out what it takes to win Michigan.”

Trump last week blasted the pact signed by President Bill Clinton and predicted that backing out would restore millions of vanished factory jobs.

At stake is the white, working-class vote, which Trump says he can turn out in droves, thereby putting upper Midwestern battlegrounds long carried by Democrats into competition in his quest for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Hillary Clinton supports renegotiating NAFTA, signed in 1992 and in effect since 1994, with Canada and Mexico. She also has said she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious agreement with Asian nations.