Philadelphia, June 30 (RHC)-- Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, saying that it is damaging to the United States.

"I'm going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers,” Trump said while speaking at an aluminium factory in Monessen, Pennsylvania, as part of his campaigning on trade targeting working-class voters.

The three-way trade deal with Mexico, the U.S. and Canada was signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994, which ultimately gutted the U.S. manufacturing sector while also further impoverishing Mexicans.  Trump has recently threatened increasing tariffs on a number of goods if elected, including cars imported from Mexico to the U.S., as a way of discouraging companies from moving jobs across the Mexican border.

“Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy. I used to be one of them. Hate to say it, but I used to be one. But it’s left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache,” Trump said, who is also a member of the financial elite.

It came ahead of the so-called “Three Amigos” Summit in Ottawa where the three NAFTA partners discussed trade in the wake of the U.K. Brexit from the European Union and rising sentiments against free trade.  President Barack Obama on a number of occasions said that he would renegotiate the NAFTA agreement during his campaigning for president in 2008.  Since elected, he never did.