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Sitting down for an interview on Donald Trump’s favorite morning talk show, Vice President JD Vance insisted on Thursday that there was nothing but “enthusiasm” for the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs that have sent global markets spiraling and economists warning of a debilitating worldwide recession.
Outside of Vance’s Fox & Friends appearance, other senior members of the Trump administration made the rounds on cable news to spin the crippling global trade war that Trump had unleashed. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, for instance, showed up on CNBC, CBS News and Bloomberg, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins spoke to pro-Trump Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo.
In an extremely friendly sitdown with Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones, who almost seemed to be reading directly from the White House’s talking points about the president’s sweeping tariffs, Vance argued that inflation and rising prices wouldn’t be a problem after Trump imposed import taxes on most of the world.
“Remember during the first Trump administration, everybody said Trump’s tariffs were going to be inflationary back then? What actually happened? We had 1.5 percent inflation, we had the fastest-growing economy in a generation,” the vice president asserted. “And then four terrible years of Biden Administration. It is useful to step back and ask ourselves, what has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America?”
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Noting that Trump “ran on” and “promised” to implement massive global tariffs, Vance said “this is a big change” and he “will not shy away from it.” At the same time, he continued to rage about the “Joe Biden globalist pathway” while claiming that the administration has “to take this country in a different direction.”
Jones, meanwhile, told the vice president that while “Wall Street and the media” are “freaking out,” he noticed that there were “workers in the Rose Garden celebrating” the president’s “Liberation Day” announcement. “What is the disconnect between the market and those workers cheering this on right now?” Jones teed up his question for Vance.
“A lot of people have gotten rich from American jobs moving overseas, but American workers have not gotten rich and, frankly, American companies have not gotten wealthy from increasing growth of foreign manufacturing overseas,” the vice president responded. “As the president says, foreign companies charge us ridiculous tariffs and engage in nontariff practices like currency manipulation, that has been awful for Main Street.”
After blaming trade deficits for steel mills closing and workers being laid off, Vance said that what he “saw in the Rose Garden was enthusiasm” from the working class for Trump’s trade policies.
“They were the Rose Garden yesterday. They’ve never had a president who stood up for jobs and stood up for American prosperity,” he declared. “They finally see that something has shifted. They were Democrats out there. They were Republicans. They were union and non-union workers alike. They know this is a big change, but we need a big change in this country because what we were doing under the Biden administration wasn’t working.”
Asked by Jones what he could tell the American people living paycheck to paycheck who are worried that potentially rising costs could hurt them in the short-term even though “they want to do their patriotic duty,” the vice-president assured viewers that the administration’s policies will work out.
“We are fighting hard to bring prices down. We’re doing a lot of things to lower the cost of energy,” he said before talking about the recent drop in egg prices.
“What I ask folks to appreciate, we will not fix things overnight. Joe Biden left us with largest peacetime debt and deficit in peacetime in America’s history. You don’t fix that overnight. We are fighting as quickly as we can to fix what was left to us,” Vance continued. “It will not happen immediately. If we pursue deregulation and cost-reducing policies, people will see in their pocket book and benefit from the fact that foreign countries can’t take advantage of us, and jobs will be more secure.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Vance also reacted to reports that “first buddy” Elon Musk — who has seen his favorability plummet as he’s taken an outsized role as Trump’s adviser — would soon be stepping away from his role as DOGE chief. While decrying the stories as “fake news,” Vance did acknowledge that Musk’s work with the administration would soon be wrapping up.
“Fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president — and he’s done a lot of good things,” Vance stated. “Elon came in and we said, ‘We need you to make government more efficient, we need you to shrink the incredible fat bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people but also costs way too much money.’ We said, ‘That’s going to take about six months’ — and that’s what Elon signed up for.”
Adding that the “work of DOGE is not even close to done,” Vance said that the meme-based “government efficiency” department — which has been responsible for slashing tens of thousands of federal workers’ jobs and dismantling government agencies — is “going to continue after Elon leaves.”
Murmurs of Musk being pushed out of Trump’s inner circle heightened after the world’s richest man’s efforts to swing the Wisconsin Supreme Court election to Republicans backfired, resulting in the liberal candidate winning by 10 points.
Meanwhile, throughout the 15-minute softball interview with the vice president, Jones did not find time to ask Vance how the administration actually came up with the rates that resulted in some countries being hit with tariffs as high as 50 percent, why Russia was exempt from the tariffs list or the reason some uninhabited islands and a U.S. military base were slapped with tariffs.
