Reeling from a cascade of blunders that drove his poll ratings downward, Donald Trump sought to regain his standing Monday by laying out an economic agenda that he portrayed as a prescription for a resurgence of American jobs.
"Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo," the Republican presidential nominee said in a carefully worded speech to the Detroit Economic Club.
Trump's proposals were split between traditional GOP policies, such as tax cuts and a rollback of federal regulations, and ideas unpopular with the party's leadership in Congress, including vast new spending on railways, airports, roads and bridges and a sharp curtailment of free trade pacts.
Trump, who was interrupted by hecklers more than a dozen times, cast his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as a champion of old and ineffective economic ideas that have left millions of Americans unemployed or impoverished as jobs shift to foreign countries.
"Every policy she has tilts the playing field toward other countries at our expense," Trump said.
Trump portrayed the nation's economic status as far worse than official statistics indicate, calling the 4.9 percent unemployment rate "one of the biggest hoaxes in American modern politics."
Trump's effort to focus on the economy comes after several weeks of lurching from one campaign controversy to another, including his feud with the family of an Army captain killed in Iraq.
