Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) on Wednesday said that a Trump administration would use tariffs to “fight back against the theft of the American middle-class.”
At a campaign rally in Auburn Hills, Michigan, Vance blasted Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), claimed that former President Donald Trump’s policies will cause price increases for consumers. Walz has specifically targeted Trump’s tariff policies with this line of attack.
“Tim Walz has the audacity, and Kamala Harris has the audacity to say that, ‘Well, if Donald Trump’s policies are enacted, that’s going to lead to higher prices for American consumers,'” Vance said.
“Tim, we already ran this experiment once. Donald Trump’s economic policies worked for American families; they worked for American consumers,” he added, referring to Trump’s first term.
Vance then underscored that cheap foreign labor, which is at times “slave labor,” can undercut wages here in America:
Think about this: If a Chinese company wants to hire a literal slave laborer making $4 a day, and they want to import the goods made by that slave laborer, then it’s going to make Americans poorer because, of course, we shouldn’t expect American middle class workers to work for a slave wage in China. We ought to expect our middle class workers to be able to support a family on those wages, and that’s what we’re going to fight for every single day.
Vance said that tariffs are a vital tool to protect American jobs from threats laid out in his example:
So here’s what you got to do to prevent those companies and those countries from undercutting the wages of American workers: You got to be willing to impose tariffs; fight back against the theft of the American middle class, penalize those companies that are shipping jobs overseas, and give a tax cut to American workers. That’s how you build prosperity for this country, and that’s what we’re going to fight for.
Trump’s tariff vision was on full display at a campaign event in late September, when he vowed to impose a 200 percent tariff on Mexican-made John Deere products if the company moves manufacturing there.
“I just noticed behind me John Deere tractors. I know a lot about John Deere. I love the company, but, as you know, they’ve announced a few days ago that they’re going to move a lot of their manufacturing business to Mexico,” Trump said.
“I’m just notifying John Deere right now: If you do that, we’re putting a 200-percent tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States,” Trump warned.