By Reid J. Epstein 

Donald Trump offered a starkly protectionist view on trade policy, pledging for the first time on Tuesday to scrap the current North American Free Trade Agreement while saying he would label China a currency manipulator and kill America's involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"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," said Mr. Trump, adding that if they don't agree to favorable terms, "America intends to withdraw from the deal."

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee's trade proposals amount to a wholesale rejection of longstanding Republican orthodoxy on trade and leave the party with a candidate arguing against policies that most GOP leaders have supported and helped enact. His position also echoes the anti-trade-deal rhetoric employed by progressive Bernie Sanders to attack rival Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary.

Mr. Trump's speech at an aluminum factory in suburban Pittsburgh drew wholesale condemnation from both Democrats allied with Hillary Clinton and Republicans who have long sought to boost U.S. trade.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which often aligns with Republicans, spent much of Mr. Trump's speech arguing against Mr. Trump on its Twitter account, saying that Mr. Trump's trade policy would cost 3.5 million jobs and result in "higher prices, fewer jobs and a weaker economy."

Little of what Mr. Trump proposed Tuesday comes as a surprise to observers of the 2016 presidential campaign. From the beginning, the New York businessman has articulated nationalist policies on the economy, trade and immigration that have driven his appeal, particularly among working-class voters who have seen blue-collar jobs disappear in an increasingly global economy.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday didn't mention the most aggressive trade policies he touted during his primary campaign: a tariff of up to 45% on Chinese-made goods and stiff financial penalties on American companies that move factory work to Mexico.

But he did seek to tie his own brand of economic nationalism with the United Kingdom's vote last week to leave the European Union.

"Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy, politics and borders," Mr. Trump said. "I was on the right side of that issue as you know -- with the people. I said it was going to happen, I felt it, while Hillary, as always, stood with the elites. Both she and President Obama predicted that one and many others totally wrong."

Mr. Trump's protectionist trade proposals place him ideologically closer to recent Democratic presidential candidates than to Republicans, who in 2012 placed enacting the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the official GOP platform. Both Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton in 2008 said they would seek to renegotiate NAFTA, though Mr. Obama didn't follow through on that pledge while in office.

Mr. Sanders, in the Vermont senator's challenge to Mrs. Clinton this year, boasted that he had voted against NAFTA -- which was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton -- and said he wasn't comfortable with any recent American trade agreements. Mr. Sanders said he would reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a position Mrs. Clinton has now embraced as well.

Write to Reid J. Epstein at Reid.Epstein@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 28, 2016 16:40 ET (20:40 GMT)