History lesson: More Republicans than Democrats supported NAFTA

“NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton. NAFTA has been a catastrophe, an absolute catastrophe for our country.”

—Donald Trump, interview with Bret Baier of Fox News, May 6, 2016

“NAFTA was given to us by Clinton. We can’t take any more of the Clintons.”

—Trump, during a rally in Charleston, W.V., May 6

“NAFTA, signed by Bill Clinton, has been a total disaster for the United States.”

—Trump, in an interview on CNN, May 2

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has long attacked free-trade pacts, in particular the North American Free Trade Agreement. For a politician who is remarkably inconsistent in his policy stances, opposition to NAFTA and trade deals has been a lodestar. BuzzFeed even located an October 1993 speech in which Trump attacked NAFTA as a bad deal.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Trump said, according to a news report. “The Mexicans want it, and that doesn’t sound good to me.”

But there are a lot of things that Trump gets wrong about NAFTA, including its basic history. He repeatedly associates it with President Bill Clinton, but that’s only half right.