JD Vance on ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs: ‘First Time’ in Decades ‘We Have an American President Saying No More’ to U.S. Being World’s ‘Piggy Bank’
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
by Matthew Boyle
2 Apr 2025
WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance told Breitbart News exclusively on Wednesday evening that for the “first time in probably 40 years,” the United States has a president in President Donald Trump who is reversing the trend of the U.S. serving as a “piggy bank” for the rest of the world.
“So for 40 years, America has been the piggy bank of the world,” Vance said when asked about the importance of the president’s announcement on Wednesday. “We absorb all of the ridiculous trade practices and economic practices of friend and foe alike. For the first time in probably 40 years, we have an American president who’s saying, ‘No more,’ that it’s not going to work, that he’s not going to allow America to be taken advantage of anymore. This decision is going to cause incredible benefits for American workers. You’ve already seen a number of American manufacturers and a number of foreign manufacturers who are saying they’re going to build or expand plants in America. That means more workers with good middle-class jobs. That means more self-sufficiency in the United States of America. Again, it can’t happen unless you have a president who fights back against these ridiculous trade practices. Finally, we have a president who’s doing exactly that.”
Vance’s interview with Breitbart News came as President Trump, in a Rose Garden event at the White House on Wednesday, unveiled wide-scale reciprocal tariffs on every country worldwide. Other countries have been charging the United States exorbitant prices to ship U.S. goods into their markets, and the U.S. has not responded in kind. Trump held up a chart, which was later released by the White House, showing the country-by-country percentage breakdown for what those countries charge the U.S. and what the U.S. will now charge them to export their goods into American markets.
Interestingly, many supporters of globalization and the fallacy of “free trade” regularly criticize Trump and other economic nationalists like Vance who support using tariffs to level the playing field for American workers. One such person is Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, who criticized the tariffs after the president announced them late on Wednesday. So, Vance sticking up for Trump and this vision is a clear contrast to that previous governing partner from Trump’s first term. Interestingly, though, these critics like Pence and others regularly do not say anything about other countries putting exorbitant tariffs on U.S. exports into their economies — they only criticize the United States when the Americans respond. Asked about this inconsistency from tariff critics and whether it represents hypocrisy, Vance told Breitbart News it does.
“Yeah, so it’s funny. You have countries who threaten to retaliate against President Trump standing up for American workers,” Vance said when asked to respond to the critics. “And my response is, well, if tariffs are so terrible, then isn’t them raising their tariffs good for us? Because these people always say that any tariffs are bad. Well, all these other countries have applied tariffs to the United States and non-tariff barriers to the United States for a generation. If it was so terrible, why do these countries keep on doing it? If it’s so terrible, why are these countries calling us, lobbying us, begging us not to do this thing? It just doesn’t make any sense. What we know from experience is that a lot of countries have gotten rich by using the United States as a piggy bank. We know that President Trump stopping this makes these countries nervous, and the reason it makes them nervous is because they know what common sense tells us, which is that when they impose tariffs on us, it’s bad for American workers, and when we fight back, it’s good for American workers.”
Beyond this broad trade reset from the president on Wednesday, Trump is also seeking to use trade and the broader economic might of the United States as a diplomatic and geopolitical tool. Trump has signed agreements with India’s Narendra Modi and others to support the so-called India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), and in his first term, of course, pushed the Abraham Accords to get Arab nations to normalize relations with Israel. IMEC is seen as the first true U.S.-led counter to the Chinese Communist Party-backed (CCP) Belt and Road Initiative, which Beijing has used to force less fortunate nations into debt to spread the influence of the People’s Republic of China. Asked about the president’s use of trade and the economic strength of the United States as a geopolitical diplomatic tool to further American interests worldwide, Vance said this is “nationalism” on display for the world.
“Yeah, in a word, it’s nationalism,” Vance told Breitbart News.” In our foreign policy and our economic policy, we have a president who’s going to put the interests of Americans first and that means in our economic policy, we’re going to fight back against ridiculous trade practices. In our foreign policy, we’re going to stop starting stupid wars. But we’re also going to ensure that America’s enemies respect America’s national interests and that means we need access to critical resources. That means that we need our allies and ourselves to have missile security, to have national security, to make our own weapons if God forbid a war would start. And so, these things are often connected. Economic security is connected to national security because, if God forbid, we had to go to war, we want our troops to go to war with the best equipment and equipment that’s made in the United States of America. The president mentioned this in his remarks today: that we’re in a situation where if we went to war against a country that made our pharmaceuticals, our kids wouldn’t have access to antibiotics. So this basic understanding of President Trump’s, which I think is very much common sense and I think most Americans get, is that we need to have more self-sufficiency. We need to make more of our own stuff. We need a foreign policy that puts the interest of our citizens first, and we need an economic policy that does the same.”
More from Vance’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.
