The defining moment in American economic history is when Bill Clinton lobbied to get China into the World Trade Organization. It was the worst political and economic mistake in American history in the last 100 years.

China are running trade deficits with the rest of the world. If you look at the U.S. trade deficit, it's close to $800 billion trade in goods. Half of that is with China, so it's a big part of the problem. And the problem with China, as opposed to, say, Canada, is that China cheats.

Donald Trump understands China influence. He's been talking about it since 1980. He understands it. The people that are on the other side of this, including his opponent, Hillary Clinton, have been part of every bad trade negotiation we've had since 1993.

The really big problem with China is that there are the unfair trade practices, like currency manipulation, illegal export subsidies and the theft of intellectual property, but then there's also things that the WTO doesn't cover that it should, which is the use of sweat shops and pollution havens.

As soon as one bad actor like China massively cheats, they win at the expense of us they win at the expense of Europe and over time it threatens the entire integrity of the global financial system and the global trading system.

Donald Trump is not a protectionist. If he imposes tariffs on China or any other country that cheats, all he wants to do is defend America against unfair trade practices.

No one should be surprised just because somebody isn't successful 100 percent of the time.

The Donald Trump trade doctrine is this. America will trade with any country, so long as that deal meets these three criterion: You increase the GDP growth rate, you decrease the trade deficit, and you strengthen the manufacturing base.

When we run these big trade deficits and send our jobs offshore, we hold our wages down and our income down. That feeds right back into the biggest part of this whole equation, consumption. This drags GDP down as well.

We're going right down the toilet, and it's a made-in-China toilet. I teach MBAs. And I noticed, starting a few years after China joined the World Trade Organization, that a lot of my students were no longer employed. They were still coming to get their MBA, but they'd lost their jobs.

Unfair trade practices drive up rents for younger people. They will drive up home prices for first-time home-buyers. So it's not just that we're losing jobs and factories. We're giving away our homes, our businesses, our companies, our technologies.

If you've been to China, you know there are over 100 cities in China, and the pollution levels are just horrific - 60,000 people a year die in Chinese factories and facilities, because they don't have any safety regulations. It's a carnage it's Dickensian.

This is what Donald Trump understands. This is the trade deficit. We run a trade deficit of close to $800 billion a year.