REPUBLICAN US presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed to tear up international free-trade deals in his final convention speech on Thursday evening.

The billionaire garnered roars of approval for a populist tirade against Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton. “America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997, following the enactment of disastrous trade deals supported by Bill and Hillary Clinton,” he said.

“No longer will we enter into these massive deals, with many countries … instead, I will make individual deals with individual countries,” Mr Trump continued.

He said multilateral trade deals like the newly signed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) had “destroyed the middle class” — a term which in the US encompasses skilled working-class jobs.

Mr Trump had put the cat among the pigeons earlier that day when he told the New York Times he would not automatically defend Nato allies in time of war.

He promised to make the US safer from terrorism and crime, which blamed on immigrants given amnesty under President Barack Obama’s government, in which Ms Clinton was secretary of state.

He claimed 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records were “roaming free” in the US “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness,” he said.

“But Hillary Clinton’s legacy does not have to be America’s legacy.” As delegates began to chant: “Lock her up!” at every mention of Ms Clinton’s name, the Republican candidate said: “Let’s defeat her in November.”

Mr Trump also blamed low wages in black and Latin American communities on immigration.

But he also paid lip-service to liberal concerns, albeit shrouded in a cloak of Islamophobia, saying young people in predominantly black cities “have as much of a right to live out their dreams as any other child in America.

“I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence … of the hateful foreign ideology,” he said.

But he left it to his daughter Ivanka Trump to say her father valued female workers and would make quality childcare affordable.