Speaking in western Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump sought to turn the page on weeks of campaign turmoil and racial controversy by returning to a core set of economic grievances that have animated his campaign from the start.
He attacked Mrs. Clinton for flip-flopping on her past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact negotiated by the Obama administration, and challenged her to pledge that she would void the agreement in its entirety.
Mrs. Clinton had backed free-trade agreements like Nafta in the past, Mr. Trump said, and he warned, “She will betray you again.”
“You will be hurt worse than ever before if she becomes president of the United States,” he said.
The language and location of Mr. Trump’s speech encapsulated his political strategy for the general election: His greatest source of support is white, working-class men, and his campaign hopes to compete in traditionally Democratic-leaning states, like Pennsylvania, to carve an unlikely path to 270 electoral votes.
Mr. Trump delivered his address at a steel plant in the heart of coal country, on a stage flanked by blocks of compressed steel wiring, aluminum cans and other metals. Behind him was a metal conveyor belt that occasionally leaked plumes of dirt and dust.
For the second time in two weeks, Mr. Trump spoke carefully from a prepared script. Having faced criticism throughout the race for factual exaggerations and outright falsehoods, Mr. Trump’s aides circulated a copy of the speech with 128 footnotes documenting its claims.
Still, Mr. Trump could not resist the occasional ad-libbed line to skewer Mrs. Clinton or boast of his own achievements. He took credit for pressuring Mrs. Clinton to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, though at the time she faced far greater pressure from a primary challenge on the left, from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Deserting his script, Mr. Trump added that he had pushed Mrs. Clinton to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” despite her inclination to avoid it in the past.
But absent from the speech was any other talk of terrorism or even a single mention of immigration, two issues that have galvanized support for his campaign.
The Clinton campaign struck back at Mr. Trump, attacking his credibility as a critic of free trade and outsourcing on a conference call Tuesday afternoon. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a populist Democrat who is viewed as a potential running mate for Mrs. Clinton, accused Mr. Trump of hypocrisy for taking a hard line on trade while doing business himself in other countries.
“With all of his personal experience profiting from making products overseas, Trump’s the perfect expert to talk about outsourcing,” Mr. Brown said, reciting a list of Trump products, from suits to picture frames, that he said were made in other countries. “We know just in my state alone where Donald Trump could have gone to make these things,” he added.
Mr. Trump planned to follow the speech with a fund-raiser in West Virginia hosted by the coal executive Robert E. Murray and a rally in eastern Ohio, another crucial state in the general election and one that Mr. Trump lost in the primary to Gov. John Kasich.
Mr. Trump’s positions on trade remain some of his most constant and steadfast policies, ones he has been consistent on throughout his campaign. At nearly every campaign rally, Mr. Trump has consistently knocked trade deals with China as unfair to the American worker, so frequently as to make his percussive pronunciation of China a hallmark of impersonators, and promising to impose heavy tariffs against the country as a way to even out the “deal.”
And trade remains an issue that perhaps resonates most among his core supporters: Even as he draws fervent cheers and chants at rallies through his pledge to build a wall along the border with Mexico, the underlying foundation of the argument is often fear of immigrants’ taking jobs, and not necessarily foreign policy.
For the past two months, Mr. Trump has more or less toured the country on a whim, holding rallies in states that are not necessarily competitive battlegrounds. This more targeted campaign swing, focused on industrial areas in the Midwest, was just the latest indication that Mr. Trump is building a more traditional, large-scale general election campaign.
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