PITTSBURGH — Today, Senator Elizabeth Warren joined DNC Chair Tom Perez and Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair Nancy Patton Mills for a virtual press conference focused on Trump’s failed trade policy with China and his broken promises to Pennsylvania voters on the economy.

The event was part of the DNC’s new push — including a new television spot in the Pittsburgh market — highlighting Donald Trump’s broken promises on trade, and how his failure to stand up to China has cost jobs and hurt working families in the Keystone State.

Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate reached 16.1% — the highest level in more than 40 years — during the month of April as Trump’s failed coronavirus response has ravaged Pennsylvania’s economy. Pennsylvania’s economy was especially vulnerable to the current crisis due to Trump’s erratic trade policy and failure to stand up to China. Trump ran for president promising that he’d bring back manufacturing jobs, and yet three Pennsylvania manufacturing hubs—Pittsburgh, Scranton, and Harrisburg—are in the top hardest hit by Trump’s erratic trade policies.

DNC Chair Tom Perez: “This reckless trade war with China has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and decimated family farms. He said he’d get tough on China, but he didn’t. Trump clamored for a trade war with China and said that it would be easy to win, but he lost that trade war. His  go-at-it-alone strategy on tariffs inflicted terrible pain on Pennsylvania workers, not China. Instead of forcing China to the table to negotiate a trade deal that protected us, China smelled Trump’s desperation and played him like a fiddle. […] Not only did Donald Trump’s ‘phase one’ trade deal fail to boost purchases of U.S. exports, phase one failed to even stop the bleeding by getting exports back to where they were before his damaging trade war. And China won’t come close to purchasing the $50 billion a year in U.S. agriculture that Trump promised. American workers, farmers, and consumers have been decimated.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren: “This is a moment of crisis for our nation and for the entire world. The president’s lack of response to the pandemic has wrecked our economy and it’s led millions of worker families to be without work. Nowhere has this been clearer than in Pennsylvania. […] This economic downturn is just the tip of the iceberg for working families in Pennsylvania.”

PA Democrats Chair Nancy Patton Mills: “We now know that it didn’t have to be this bad. Had Donald Trump taken the coronavirus seriously, had he not failed for China’s propaganda, or had he put the needs of the American people ahead of his own political pursuits, thousands more Pennsylvanians would still be alive and millions would still have their jobs. […] And while we’re now witnessing a once-in-a-generation crisis, we can’t forget that families across the Commonwealth have been feeling the pain of Donald Trump’s policies since his first day in office. Much of the pain is a direct result of Trump’s failed trade war with China — an erratic, reckless policy that continues to plague Pennsylvanian businesses as we speak.