Vance defends tariffs, claims Trump would veto national abortion ban
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, denied in an interview with NBC News on Sunday that tariffs had caused higher costs for Americans, as economists have documented, and said he believed Trump would veto a federal abortion ban, trying to blunt two potent lines of attack from Democrats.
Vance also equivocated when asked repeatedly whether the mass deportations of migrants in the U.S. illegally, which Trump has called for, would involve separating families.
In a lengthy exchange on tariffs, Vance denied that tariffs Trump had imposed during his first term in office had raised prices for Americans, though data shows they did, and maintained that they had brought a significant number of jobs back to the United States, though data shows they didn’t.
“When Kamala Harris says if we do the thing that Trump already did, it’s going to be way worse than it was last time, I just don’t think that makes a lot of sense,” he said, adding, “Donald Trump already did it, he brought a lot of jobs back, and it didn’t cause inflation.”
In response to follow-up questions from NBC’s Kristen Welker, Vance described the theoretical argument for tariffs – that they would encourage companies to produce goods domestically by punishing them for importing from countries, he said, like China.
Vance did not acknowledge a nonpartisan study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showing that Trump’s tariffs did not accomplish that goal. At one point, Vance suggested that even if consumers did end up paying more, it wouldn’t matter because the higher costs would be offset by higher wages.
The Biden administration has adopted some of Trump’s protectionist trade policies, keeping in place many of his tariffs and adding new ones. But since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, Harris has denounced Trump’s proposals to expand tariffs. She has not said specifically which of the existing ones she would keep or remove.
Welker also asked whether Vance could say definitively that, if elected, he and Trump would not “impose a federal ban on abortion.”
“I can absolutely commit to that,” he said. He added, when asked if that meant Trump would veto a bill such as the 15-week ban that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has proposed, “If you’re not supporting it as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it.”
Vance – who had expressed support for national abortion restrictions before he was Trump’s running mate – went on to try to parse the meaning of the word “ban.” Graham’s bill would ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks’ gestation, but Vance said that “Lindsey Graham himself has not advocated a federal abortion ban. Lindsey Graham has advocated a federal minimum standard.” (Vance added that Trump didn’t support that either.)
Appearing on NBC immediately after the Vance interview aired, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Democrats should not trust Vance’s or Trump’s recent pledges not to pursue a national abortion ban, given that Trump has boasted about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and that Vance urged the Justice Department last year to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act to stop the mailing of abortion pills.
“American women are not stupid,” Warren said, “and we are not going to trust the futures of our daughters and granddaughters to two men who have openly bragged about blocking access to abortion.”
In one of the most contentious portions of Vance’s interview, Welker asked him three times whether families would be separated under Trump’s proposed mass deportations of migrants in the country illegally – a possibility, for example, when one member of a family is in the country illegally and others are not. Vance did not give a direct answer.
He obliquely acknowledged the possibility before claiming, without providing evidence, that the Biden-Harris administration’s policies were separating more families than a Trump-Vance administration would.
“I think that families are currently being separated, and you’re certainly going to have to deport some people in this country,” he said.
“So that’s a yes?” Welker asked.
“No,” Vance said.
He added, “You start with the most violent criminals,” before revisiting his claims that the policies of the Biden administration had allowed children to fall into the hands of drug cartels and sex traffickers.
Vance also said he was glad Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had endorsed the Trump ticket.
Kennedy has said, falsely, that vaccines cause autism, linked antidepressants to school shootings and refused to “take sides on 9/11 or any of the other debates.”
“There are things that Robert Kennedy has said that I disagree with. I’m sure there are things that I’ve said that he’s going to disagree with,” he said. “But I think what his endorsement represents is that Donald J. Trump’s Republican Party is a big-tent party.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.