J.D. Vance’s Revisionist History
J.D. Vance thinks Donald Trump’s tariffs actually worked: In a cable news segment this weekend, vice-presidential contender J.D. Vance defended his running mate’s first-term tariff policies.
“How do you respond to that charge that Trump’s tariffs would hurt the middle class?” Meet the Press anchor Kristen Welker asked Vance in a long sit-down.
“There’s this whole thing that Kamala Harris did at the convention where she made a bunch of claims about what would happen and not enough actually reflection on what already happened, right? Because Donald Trump was already president. He used tariffs to bring manufacturing jobs back to our country, and I think he’ll do it again. And he did it while keeping prices extremely low. Because if you go back to the Trump presidency, we had 12,000 factories that were built during Donald Trump’s presidency. Inflation never really ticked above two percent his entire administration,” responded Vance.
Welker pushed back more, asking him roughly the same question again: “Do you acknowledge that imposing more tariffs will ultimately cost consumers?”
“What it really does is it penalizes importers from bringing goods outside the country, into the country,” responded Vance. “And I think that’s just a necessary thing. We know that China and a number of other countries are using, effectively, slave labor to undercut the wages of American workers. Donald Trump thinks that has to stop.”
“But it caused consumers to pay more,” continued Welker. “They paid more in taxes, $80 billion worth. Do you acknowledge that consumers ultimately will pay more if there are more tariffs imposed?”
Vance ultimately responded with a no. “I think economists really disagree about the effects of tariffs. Because there can be a dynamic effect, right? So what some economists will say is what you just said, that it will actually raise costs for consumers. But what other people say, and I think the record supports this other view, is that it causes this dynamic effect where more jobs come into the country. Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer, you gain in higher wages, so you’re ultimately much better off.”
Does the record, in fact, say this? “Six years after then-President Donald Trump signed the first tariffs and began a costly U.S.-China trade war, it’s become clear that these tariffs are an abject policy and economic failure,” wrote Jay Derr of the Reason Foundation (the organization that publishes this website) earlier this year. “These tariffs have negatively impacted trade between the U.S. and China, leading importers to shift toward Mexico’s west coast instead of shipping directly to the United States. As a result, trade between Mexico and China has grown by 60% in one year.”
They also, on net, failed to protect American jobs: The U.S.-China Business Council found in 2021, that some
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