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Donald Trump claimed during a campaign speech in North Carolina that people in other countries want to kill him because of his trade policies.
“All of your furniture makers are going to come back and come back bigger and stronger and better than ever before,” Trump said from the shop floor of the Mosack Group in Mint Hill, a company that makes plumbing components.
“They’re mostly gone. They’re all coming back.
“This is why people in countries want to kill me,” he went on. “They’re not happy with me. It is, it’s a risky business. This is why they want to kill me. They only kill consequential presidents, remember that. But this is why. If you’re one of the countries that’s affected, you’re not happy with what I’m saying. When they used to say they liked Barack Hussein Obama — of course they do, because he did nothing to help us!"
Trump, who’s visited the swing state six times since late July, is hoping to sell voters on his economic message, and in North Carolina, that means talking about its declining hardwood furniture industry.
Between 1999 and 2009, the state lost more than half its jobs in the sector, thanks to competition from free trade agreements and state industry leaders pursuing Chinese imports instead of U.S.-made furntiture to cut costs, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
At campaign stops, the former president has touted his actions in office to bolster American companies, like a 2019 executive order mandating federal agencies buy products with more U.S.-made components.
Trump has also called for an “automatic” tariff on all $3 trillion of U.S. imports, a measure he says will raise revenue to cover the costs of cutting taxes and paying for a child care program. Economists say the measure could raise tax revenues but raise prices and reduce household incomes, given the substantial impact such a measure would have on world trade.
The message may be resonating nonetheless. Polls show Trump retains a modest two percent lead over Harris in the crucial swing state, which he won in both previous elections.
The former president has faced multiple alleged attempts on his life, including two apparent assassination plots in Pennsylvania and Florida, and a Pakistani man with ties to Iran who allegedly sought to carry out a murder-for-hire plot against U.S. leaders, including Trump as a potential target.
Adding to Trump’s difficulties on the trail are a variety of potential image issues, from his ties to GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who allegedly left white supremacist and sexually graphic comments on a porn site, to mental health experts accusing Trump of being in “cognitive decline” and having “lost touch with reality.”
