Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden stole his new "Buy American" plan, President Donald Trump said.
"He plagiarized from me," Trump told reporters before leaving for Florida on Friday.
"It's a plan that, it's very radical left, but he says the right things because he's copying what I've done. But the difference is he can't do it, and he knows he's not doing that, can't be the same, because he's raising taxes way too much. He's also putting tremendous amounts of regulations back on," the Republican president said.
"And those two things are two primary reasons that I created the greatest economy we've ever had—and now we're creating it again."
In a separate area outside the White House, counselor Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, also accused Biden of plagiarism.
"And then yesterday, for all to see, he was plagiarizing Donald Trump—buy American," Conway added. "Easy to do when President Trump is in charge of bringing back manufacturing, bringing back wealth and jobs that were parked overseas because of the Obama-Biden policies, and the policies of the other presidents, frankly."
"People should focus on Biden's word, which includes support for non-reciprocal, imbalanced trade deals that screwed the American worker, screwed American industries, screwed America," she told reporters.
Biden's campaign didn't respond to a request for comment.
The plan is about "how to create millions of good paying union jobs, building promising technologies that we need now and we’ll need in the future," Biden said.
"And it starts with a pretty basic idea, when we spend taxpayers’ money, when the federal government spends taxpayers’ money, we should use it to buy American products and support American jobs."
Trump promised to bring jobs back to the United States but hasn't delivered, Biden charged.
"I’m going to change that. We’re going to double the tax on foreign profits so we don’t encourage people to leave and build abroad," he said. Biden also pledged to raise the corporate tax to 28 percent, which he said would provide hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in the country's growth.
Trump has issued a number of executive orders meant to up the purchasing of American-made goods.
In one order issued in April 2017, Trump said the policy of the executive branch would be to "buy American and hire American."
"In order to promote economic and national security and to help stimulate economic growth, create good jobs at decent wages, strengthen our middle class, and support the American manufacturing and defense industrial bases, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to maximize, consistent with law, through terms and conditions of Federal financial assistance awards and Federal procurements, the use of goods, products, and materials produced in the United States," the order states.
