Chamber CEO Tom Donohue: Without Trade, U.S. Can Forget About Growth

As the trade policy debate between presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump heats ups, Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue says both candidates are leaving out one very important fundamental issue  -- how trade can drive economic growth.

“If we don’t get off of one, one-and-a-half percent growth, get it up to two-and-a-half and three, we can forget increasing jobs, driving this economy and putting people back to work,” he told the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.

In addition to large multi-national corporations, Donahue argued tens of thousands of small companies are also for the Trans Pacific Partnership [TPP].

He said trade policy can make or break the U.S. economy.

“The trade deal that was negotiated with all of the countries on the Pacific Rim is geopolitically very important to us -- our relationship with China…. We have to fix some things with pharmaceuticals -- you do that without opening up the agreement and then you have an issue where the American people and American workers are going to have a much better chance to sell things to people in that whole region. You kill it and somebody else owns the relationship and somebody else gets the business,” he said.

He said the U.S. needs to be a part of the global economy in order to thrive.

“95 percent of the people that we want to sell something to don’t live in the United States. If you look at the growth in exports to China, they continue to go up, and China’s huge and it will continue to go up… A lot of the imports are the kind of imports in high quality, that go to Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Target (NYSE:TGT) store where mid-America wants to go shop. Take that away and their costs go up,” he said.