JD Vance: Britain is stagnating because of immigration

Telegraph

18-03-2025

Britain is stagnating because of its high levels of immigration, JD Vance has said.
In a speech on Tuesday, the US vice-president said the West 'got lazy' by using 'cheap labour' as a substitute for productivity.
'I'd say that if you look in nearly every country, from Canada to the UK, that imported large amounts of cheap labour, you've seen productivity stagnate,' Mr Vance told a gathering of tech bosses in Washington DC.
'That's not a total happenstance. I think that the connection is very direct.'
The vice-president told attendees at a summit hosted by Andreesen Horowitz, the venture capital firm, that the US had also been 'addicted to cheap labour' during its '40 years of failed economic policy'.
Tariffs
Donald Trump sees tariffs as a 'necessary tool to protect our jobs and our industries from other countries', he added.
Mr Trump recently imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, with some delayed until April 2, and floated the idea of imposing 200 per cent on European wine and spirits.
Britain has been sucked into the US president's trade war after he imposed 25 per cent tariffs on iron and steel imports.
Mr Vance argued on Tuesday that Washington's use of tariffs combined with technological advances would allow the US to rebuild its manufacturing base.
'When you erect a tariff wall around a critical industry like auto manufacturing and you combine that with advanced robotics and lower energy costs and other tools that increase the productivity of US labour, you give American workers a multiplying effect,' he said.
'Now that, in turn, allows firms to make things here at a price-competitive basis.'
JD Vance criticises Britain
The vice-president has emerged as a repeated critic of Britain since entering office in January despite his apparently close relationship with David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, he lambasted allies for clamping down on free speech, and invoked the example of a British man, Adam Smith-Connor, who was arrested and convicted in 2022 after praying silently outside an abortion clinic.
Mr Smith-Connor told The Telegraph at the time that he was 'delighted' that Mr Vance was 'exposing the reality' of censorship in Britain.
Earlier this month, Mr Vance was accused of denigrating Britain's war record after suggesting that the UK and France had not fought a war in 40 years.
Between 2001 and 2014, more than 600 British troops were killed fighting alongside the US in Iraq – where Mr Vance served as a military journalist with the US Marine Corps in 2005 – and Afghanistan.