It was not a particularly productive discussion, but here is a transcript of NBC's Kristen Welker talking to J.D. Vance about tariffs last weekend:
Welker:
Vice President Kamala Harris, in making her case, said that the tariff plans Donald Trump is proposing will hurt the middle class. Here's what she said specifically: "he intends to enact what in effect is a national sales tax, call it a Trump tax, that would raise prices on middle class families by almost $4,000 a year." Now the estimates vary, but how do you respond to that charge that Trump's tariffs would hurt the middle class?
Vance:
If you step back a little bit, Kristen, 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 2% his entire administration, in fact, it was sort of around one and a half percent most of the time that he was president. So 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.
Welker:
Well, let's talk about Trump's record during his first term. He did impose rounds of tariffs, and it cost Americans nearly $80 billion in new taxes. Do you acknowledge that imposing more tariffs will ultimately cost consumers?
Vance:
Well, what it really does is it penalizes importers from bringing goods outside the country into the country. 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. And again, what Kamala Harris here is saying, Kristen, is that if you do this, you're somehow going to cause skyrocketing inflation. In reality, Donald Trump already did it. He brought a lot of jobs back, and it didn't cause inflation.
Welker:
But it caused consumers to pay more. They paid more in taxes, $80 billion worth. Do you acknowledge that consumers ultimately will pay more if there are more tariffs?
Vance:
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. You have more take home pay, you have better jobs, and also you have more reliance. Because one of the things we learned during covid -- I don't, by the way, blame Democrats for this -- but one of the things we learned during covid Kristen is that if our supply chains are really brittle, if we depend on the Chinese to make too much of our stuff, then prices can skyrocket at a time of crisis. The economists who say the tariffs are bad, they don't take that into account. We've all learned at the hard way.
Welker:
And it is economists across the board, really. I mean, the Wall Street Journal says economic data show that Donald Trump's trade war with China did not achieve its objectives of reversing the declines in US manufacturing, or reshoring factory jobs. I hear what you're saying. It's a complicated picture. But just on that bottom line point, you can't guarantee that Americans won't wind up paying a penny more, can you?
Vance:
Well, I think what you can guarantee is that if you don't bring more manufacturing jobs back into this country, you don't make our supply chains more stable, you're gonna cause higher prices over the long term. I think that is what is absolutely true ...
Welker:
But you acknowledge they could wind up paying more?
Vance:
What I acknowledge, Kristen, is that unless we bring more manufacturing jobs back to this country, we are going to end up paying more in the long term. Remember the whole promise -- again, this was a bipartisan thing. My own party was as wrong about it as Democrats were, and Donald Trump was right about it -- what they said is that if you shift all of our manufacturing to East Asia and to Mexico, Americans would pay lower prices. Well, here we are now, and Americans are paying higher prices. And just one more thing on this, Kristen, because it's really important to go at what Kamala Harris actually said her convention speech. She says that she wants to stand up to China on behalf of American workers. If you're not willing to impose tariffs on companies that are manufacturing in China using slave labor in China, you're not standing up to the Chinese and Americans are going to suffer.
I'm going to make a few points here.
First, over on social media, plenty of people piled on to debunk his suggestion that economists disagree about the effect of tariffs. As they noted, there really isn't much disagreement that tariffs raise prices for consumers. And there is little support for the idea of the "dynamic effects" of tariffs (if Vance has anything he thinks is evidence from the "other people" he referred to, he should cite to it).
Second, the cost figures Harris was referring to are based on the 10-20% universal baseline tariffs proposed by Trump. The $4,000 figure could be derived from the following studies: "The Center for American Progress released a report concluding that costs for American families would increase by $3,900 per year if Trump were to impose a blanket 20 percent tariff on imports, while the National Taxpayers Union estimated in February that Trump’s original suggestion of a 10 percent tariff would cost households $3,942 per year." In his response, Vance focused mainly on China, which ignores the point that Harris was making about the universal tariffs, and therefore his comments don't add much to the discussion of Trump's proposal to impose these tariffs.
With regard to China, I think it's worth noting that Trump's tariffs on China have not changed China's non-market practices, if anybody has that in mind as a goal (it's not clear to me how many people do -- there seem to be a mix of opinions on this at the moment).
As to Chinese labor issues, there is a whole system in place for addressing certain aspects of this, and as far as I can tell the various tariffs that have been imposed on China have little to do with this issue and little impact on it.
And as a general point, I think people would be shocked at the price rises that would result from Trump's recent tariff proposals, and that would put an end to the debate about tariffs. But I hope we don't have to actually experience this to learn that lesson.
Given the prominence of the tariff issue due to Trump (and Vance) constantly raising it, it would be nice if some media folks would press the candidates on the specifics a bit more. Based on the exchange above, I'm not hopeful that these discussions will be very informative, but you never know for sure until you try.
(The Harris/Walz campaign responded to Vance's remarks with this.)
