Former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday said the US' allies have taken advantage of it more than its enemies.

“Our allies have taken advantage of us more than our enemies. Our allies are the European Union. We have a trade deficit of USD300 billion with the European Union,” Trump told the Economic Club of Chicago in response to a question.

“We have trade deals that were so bad that I said, who are the people that are doing it? They're either very stupid or they're getting paid off,” he said.

“I put tariffs on China, 27.5 percent. Otherwise, we'd be flooded with Chinese cars. All of our factories would close. We'd have no jobs at all in the auto industry. That goes for electricity, which is a killer, which I've explained. I put tariffs on South Korea because they were sending in trucks. I put tariffs on fairly substantial tariffs,” he said.

“Do you know that our car companies make almost all of their money with the small trucks, SUVs and small trucks? If I took those tariffs, you would be inundated. Every car company would be out of business,” Trump said.

Responding to questions on Russia, he defended his relationship with President Vladimir Putin.

On tariff, he reiterated that India is a tough country.

“India is a very tough country. It's not only China. China, I would say probably the toughest. You know what's very tough? European Union, our beautiful European countries, wonderful, wonderful. If you add them up, they're almost the size of us. They treat us so badly. We have a deficit,” Trump said.

“We are going to bring the companies back. We're going to lower taxes still further for companies that are going to make their product in the USA. We're going to protect those companies with strong tariffs because I'm a believer in tariffs,” he added.

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