Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday that Obamacare, high taxes, and regulation are stifling business in the United States.
President Barack Obama's regulations are "making it virtually impossible to start new businesses and a lot of old businesses are being hurt very badly," he told CNBC. "Obamacare is devastating businesses, I get it all the time," he said.
In a wide-ranging interview, Trump also said the United States will continue engaging in free trade if he is elected, but will negotiate better deals.
"We are absolutely going to keep trading," Trump said in an interview with CNBC, adding he was "not an isolationist." Trump said he would renegotiate, not scrap, existing trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement. "I'm a fair trader," Trump said.
Earlier this week, the New York real-estate developer told Fox News that he didn’t think the stock market was a sound place to put money.
Trump says low interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve have lingered while the stock market has skyrocketed. That can’t last forever, he warned.
"If rates go up, you're going to see something that's not pretty," the billionaire businessman told Fox. "It's all a big bubble."
Trump noted that he has dabbled in the market successfully — "I did like 50 stocks just for fun, because I'm not a person that really believes in it too much," he said. "I wouldn't do it," he said.
In addition, the self-proclaimed "king of debt" — a declaration CNBC said he made on their network in May — Trump promised to use the low-interest environment as a means to rebuild the national infrastructure.
"This is a time to borrow and borrow long term," he told CNBC, explaining how he would finance rebuilding airports and bridges and upgrading the military.
"Normally you would say you want to reduce your debt, and I like to reduce debt as much as anybody," he said. "The problem is, you have a military problem, you have an infrastructure problem — a tremendous infrastructure problem — and you have other problems. The asset is your rates are so low," he said.
"What's going to happen when the rates eventually go up and you can't borrow, you absolutely can't borrow, because it's too expensive?" he said. "It would destroy our balance sheet, totally destroy the balance sheet."
Recent opinion polls have shown Trump losing ground to Clinton, a former U.S. senator and first lady, in the race for the Nov. 8 election. An average of polls by RealClearPolitics has Clinton 7.7 percentage points ahead, at 48 percent to his 40.3 percent.
Supporters of Trump, who has never held elected office, like the combative and often insulting style that has drawn him wide criticism, including from some in his party. He said that if that style costs him the election in 90 days, he goes back to a good life.
"It's not what I'm looking to do. I think we're going to have a victory but we'll see," he said.
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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