Photo by Casey Junkins U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, speaks to about 400 local high school students regarding potential careers in manufacturing during a Thursday forum at Belmont College.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson agrees with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump when it comes to renegotiating or abandoning free trade deals that hurt America’s manufacturing base.

He does not, however, agree with Trump’s hesitation to declare that he will accept a potential loss to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 general election.

“He has no choice but to accept the results. It’s the United States of America,” Johnson, R-Ohio, said of Trump. “Whether it’s Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, whoever wins becomes president. Whoever loses … whether they call and concede or not, does it really matter?”

Trump backers cited former Vice President Al Gore’s contest of the Florida election results in 2000 as precedent for the billionaire businessman’s position.

Despite numerous controversies during the last month, Johnson remains resolute in his support of the New York City real estate mogul.

“She wants open borders, for God sakes,” Johnson said, referring to Clinton’s position on immigration. “She wants to increase entitlement programs. She wants to raise taxes on America’s wealthy.”

Regarding the skyrocketing national debt, Johnson said, “We can’t spend our way out of this problem, which is what Hillary Clinton wants to double down on.”

In considering the closure during the last two decades of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp., Ormet Corp. and most of the former Weirton Steel Corp. — resulting in the loss of thousands of middle-class jobs — Johnson agrees with Trump about the need to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton signed this law, commonly known as NAFTA, during the 1990s, in addition to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which led to the creation of the World Trade Organization.

During a June speech at Ohio University Eastern, Trump said, “Ohio has lost one in three manufacturing jobs since Bill Clinton signed an agreement to put China into the World Trade Organization. Not good.”

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Johnson said Thursday when asked if he would be in favor of restructuring NAFTA. “We need trade that will empower the American workers and will give them a competitive landscape with which to work in the global economy.”

Along with Trump, Johnson said he also opposes the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This new deal — which President Barack Obama favors, but Hillary Clinton does not — would place the U.S. into an agreement with Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Japan, Peru, Malaysia, Australia, Brunei, Singapore and New Zealand.

“Do we need trade? Absolutely, we need trade. But we need fair trade,” Johnson said.

Johnson is seeking a fourth term in Congress in the Nov. 8 general election. His Democratic challenger is Belpre, Ohio, Mayor Michael Lorentz, who is now in his ninth year serving the city in this role.

“I am not for anything that does not provide an even playing field for us,” Lorentz said in discussing his opposition to TPP and NAFTA. “If we’re paying import fees to put our products into their countries, then they should have pay those same fees to sell products here.”

Lorentz, however, firmly supports Clinton’s bid to become the nation’s first female president. He vehemently disagrees with Trump’s language.

“People say, ‘He is just saying what people are thinking.’ You have to be intelligent enough to know that once you are in office, you kind of lose the right to talk like an idiot,” Lorentz said.