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.

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.

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.

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.

When China got into the WTO, that allowed it to sell into any other country within the WTO - not just the United States - at the lowest tariffs that country offered. And the other countries could sell into China at the lowest tariffs that China offered. The problem, right off the bat, was that China had much higher tariffs than everywhere else, so the U.S. and Europe in particular got the short end of that stick.

From 1947 to 2001, the American economy grew annually at a rate of 3.5 percent. After China got into the World Trade Organization, got access to our markets and flooded our markets with its illegally subsidized exports, we grew at a rate of 1.8 percent from 2002 to 2015. That's almost cut in half.

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.