When JD Vance dubbed Trump's tariff plan as ‘yesterday's war’: ‘Jobs are already gone’

Some eight years ago, United States Vice President JD Vance was a vocal critic of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's “protectionist” trade policies, particularly his advocacy for tariffs, asserting that only automation and technological changes were reshaping the economy. JD Vance had also publicly called the Republican businessman an “idiot” and said he was “reprehensible.”

Privately, he even compared him to Adolf Hitler.

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a*****e like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad or that he's America's Hitler,” he wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016, Reuters reported.

He also directly took aims at trade policies of Donald Trump, saying, “If you’re worried about America’s economic interest, focus more on automation/education than trade protectionism.” In 2017, Vance said fighting over tariffs were “yesterday's war”.

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“Maybe you could [turn the clock] a little bit on trade if we were in the 1980s, but we’ve already lost that battle in some ways,” Vance told CNN, adding, “The jobs are already gone.”

Now in 2024, since entering the Senate, JD Vance has changed his stance towards Trump policies, eventually becoming a strong supporter of tariffs – a shift that was inspired by witnessing the success of Trump's policies, like he says.

He now contends that these measures are essential to revitalize the American economy.

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“Vice President Vance has been crystal clear in his unwavering support for revitalizing the American economy by bringing back manufacturing jobs and sticking up for middle class workers and families since before he launched his US Senate race, and that is a large part of why he was elected to public office in the first place,” Taylor Van Kirk, spokesperson for the vice president, was quoted as saying by CNN.

As Trump tariffs came into effect routing the global markets, JD Vance sought to paint it as a temporary pain while the White House downplayed the immediate effects of tariffs.

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“I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw the President said earlier today, it’s like a patient who was very sick, we did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Vance had said.

The vice president added, “We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America,” Vance said.

(With agency inputs)