Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance, running against Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), says the nation’s ruling class is interested in preserving its “managed decline” of the United States by weakening former President Trump’s tariffs on China.
During an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Vance detailed how Washington, DC, lawmakers, bureaucrats, and corporate special interests have kept the U.S. in a “managed decline” for decades while profiting for themselves.
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“I use this phrase a lot on the campaign trail, managed decline,” Vance said. “It feels sometimes like our leaders are just slowly allowing the country to slip into decline and sometimes it’s hard to see and I think right now it’s very obvious.”
“This highlights one of the reasons why we need an America First trade policy, an America First supply chain policy,” Vance continued. “We’re finding out the hard way with China — they make way too much of our stuff — when they shut down their entire economy, when they shut down the country as they’re doing right now, we become affected by that.”
“This is the problem with allowing other people, people who don’t really like you that much, to make all your stuff is they actually have you by the you-know-what when they decide to shut down their economy,” he said. “… this highlights why we have to make our own stuff in this country.”
Vance also called out President Joe Biden for suggesting that he may cut U.S. tariffs on China as well as the Republicans who have lobbied the president to do so.
“Biden and a lot of Republicans have talked about weakening the tariffs on China which is one of the reasons why you started to see under President Trump some of those companies, some of that manufacturing, some of that supplies, moving back closer to home,” Vance said.
“This to me is the economic question for the next 30 years of our country: Are we going to commit to being self-sufficient and making our own things or are we going to continue to allow our entire prosperity to be held hostage by countries like China?” he continued.
“That is the issue and unfortunately far too many Republicans and of course the entire Democrat party that’s gotten rich off the way we do business with China, this is one of the things … you know managed decline is bad for normal Americans but it’s actually pretty good if you’re one of the people who’ve profited from the decline,” Vance said.
As Breitbart News reported this week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called on the Biden administration to cut U.S. tariffs on China and return to the decades-long GOP-Democrat consensus on free trade that persisted before Trump took office.
Already, Biden has eliminated U.S. tariffs on more than 350 China-made products.
In particular, Vance said, Republicans “have to wake up” on the trade issue.
“We’re being led by people, many of whom have gotten rich by doing business with our biggest geopolitical foe, and they’re … not as worried about the lack of baby formula, they’re not worried about the fact that things are getting more and more expensive, of course, because they’ve profited greatly from what’s gone on,” Vance said. “We’ve got to reverse course.”
From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China has eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
In Ohio, alone, at least 136,700 American jobs have been eliminated from 2001 to 2018 as a result of U.S. free trade with China. Nearly 10,000 of those jobs were outsourced in Ryan’s district.
Vance has been endorsed by Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, among others.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
