JD Vance applauded Trump's tariff announcement from the Rose Garden - after spending years calling them a terrible idea
However, before he was a spokesman for the Trump Liberation Day tariffs, Vance was critical of the very same policies, including directly rebuking Trump when he talked about similar measures during his first term, according to an analysis from CNN's KFILE.
The Trump administration's major argument for the tariffs has been that they will encourage firms to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., claims Vance once dismissed out of hand.
The former senator for Ohio once called fighting for such jobs 'yesterday's war,' and used other comments to advocate for education and retraining as ways to lift American workers instead.
'So many of these jobs that have disappeared from these areas just aren't coming back. They haven't disappeared so much from globalization or from shipping them overseas,' he said in 2017. 'They've largely disappeared because of automation and because of new technological change.'
Elsewhere, Vance responded directly to Trump's long-running calls for tariffs.
'Can't be repeated enough: if you're worried about America's economic interest, focus more on automation/education than trade protectionism,' Vance wrote on what was then Twitter in 2017, after Trump met with manufacturing CEOs that year.
'Vice President Vance has been crystal clear in his unwavering support for revitalizing the American economy by bringing back manufacturing jobs and sticking up for middle class workers and families since before he launched his U.S. Senate race, and that is a large part of why he was elected to public office in the first place,' a spokesperson for Vance told the KFILE.
The resurfaced trade comments are the latest example of Vance having to justify his past, often strident, criticisms of Trump and his ideas.
Vance, who once flatly declared himself a 'Never Trump guy' who 'never liked' the New York Republican, has reportedly previously called Trump a "fraud," a "moral disaster," a "cynical a**hole," a "bad man," and suggested he could be "America's Hitler." He also once reportedly said Trump had "thoroughly failed to deliver his economic populism.'
Vance began to change his tone towards Trump after his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy and association with investor Peter Thiel helped him become a rising star in Republican politics.
'I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy,' Vance said during his 2021 campaign for Senate. 'I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.'
During the 2024 campaign, Vance said "dishonest fabrications" in the media previously misled him about Trump.
"I've always been extremely open about the fact that I was wrong about Donald Trump," Vance said during a vice-presidential debate. "I was wrong first of all because I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record.
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
ICE turned Louisiana into America's deportation capital. The inspiration was Amazon and FedEx ‘with human beings'
After he was arrested outside his Virginia apartment in March, Georgetown University professor Badar Khan Suri was briefly detained in the state before being put on a plane bound for an immigration detention center more than 1,000 miles away. Suri — who was targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his Palestinian activism and his family ties to Gaza — arrived at the only ICE facility that doubles as an airport, without his attorneys having any idea where he was. Officers told Suri that he had entered the nation's ' super deportation center, ' according to his attorneys. The college professor was shackled at the ankles and handcuffed then marched into a 70,000 square foot 'staging facility' in Alexandria, Louisiana, which has emerged as the nexus point for President Donald Trump's mass deportation machine. Suri is far from alone. Since Trump returned to the White House, more than 20,000 people en route to other detention centers have passed through the Louisiana facility — which ICE officials have long aspired to operate like corporate giants FedEx and Amazon. ICE's acting director Todd Lyons has bluntly compared the movement of people to packages. 'We need to get better at treating this like a business, where this mass deportation operation is something like you would see and say, like, Amazon trying to get your Prime delivery within 24 hours,' Lyons told a law enforcement conference in Phoenix earlier this year. 'So, trying to figure out how to do that with human beings,' he said. The idea of 'running the government like a business' has taken root inside ICE over the last decade with lucrative public-private partnerships between the federal government and for-profit contractors, which operate roughly 90 percent of all ICE detention centers. Since before the Trump administration, the ICE field office in New Orleans — which is responsible for removal operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — was modeling operations after shipping giant FedEx and its 'spoke-hub' model. Detainees are temporarily held in detention 'hubs' before they're sent to a network of detention center 'spokes' where they wait to be deported. In Suri's case, he arrived at the Alexandria 'hub' before he was moved to a regional 'spoke' in Texas. The idea for a staging facility in Louisiana ' started on a cocktail napkin ' at Ruth's Chris steakhouse, according to Philip Miller, a former ICE official in New Orleans who went on to work for an IT firm that contracts with federal law enforcement. Miller sought 'a more effective and efficient way of moving the growing number of foreign detainees,' according to 2015 newsletter from GEO Group, the private prison contractor that operates the Alexandria facility. Trump's border czar Tom Homan tapped former GEO Group executive David Venturella to support the administration's deportation agenda, and he is now serving in a top role at ICE managing contracts for immigrant detention centers, according to The Washington Post. Meanwhile, Daniel Bible, who worked at ICE for 15 years, including a year as the executive associate director of removal operations, left the agency in November 2024 to join GEO Group as its executive vice president. Lyons, who has helmed ICE since March, addressed his now-viral remarks about treating immigrants like packages in an interview the following month. 'The key part that got left out of that statement was, I said, they deal with boxes, we deal with human beings, which is totally different,' he told Boston 25 News. ICE 'should be run like a corporation', he told the outlet. 'We need to be better about removing those individuals who have been lawfully ordered out of the country in a safe, efficient manner,' Lyons continued. 'We can't trade innovation and efficiency for how we treat the people in our custody.' The Independent has requested comment from ICE on its removal operations at the Alexandria facility. Fourteen of the 20 largest ICE detention centers in the U.S. are in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, a network that immigrant advocates have labelled 'deportation alley.' The jails — most of which are operated by private prison companies — hold thousands of people each year. More than 7,000 people are currently jailed in Louisiana's immigration detention centers while Texas facilities are holding more than 12,000. More than 56,000 people are in ICE detention across the country. But Louisiana is home to the nation's only ICE detention center with a tarmac. The facility in Alexandria has become the nation's busiest deportation airport with 1,200 flights to other U.S. detention centers and more than 200 planes leaving the country since Trump took office. ICE has operated at least 209 deportation flights in June, the highest level since 2020. During the first six months of Trump's second presidency, ICE removed nearly 150,000 people from the U.S. Alexandria, a city of roughly 44,000 people, is the ninth largest in the state but surrounded by forest and swampland, with summer temperatures regularly climbing into triple digits with humidity levels exceeding 70 percent. Detainees at the facility in Alexandria cannot be held for more than 72 hours, and the facility does not permit access to visitors or even legal counsel, according to attorneys. Suri was held there for three days before being transferred to a Texas detention center where he was housed in the 'TV room,' according to his attorneys. He was given only a thin plastic mattress. Suri was released after spending eight weeks in detention amid an ongoing legal battle. Louisiana locks up more people per capita than any other U.S. state, in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet. Most incarcerated people in Louisiana are in local jails, and the state pays sheriffs a daily rate per inmate, creating what civil rights groups fear is a cruel pay-to-play system that incentivizes locking people up. In 2017, the state's Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards advanced legislation to reduce the state's prison population, which ultimately fell by more than 8,000 over the next five years. But at the same time, the first Trump administration was ramping up immigration arrests and expanding capacity to hold immigrants in detention. Following Trump's 2016 victory, ICE expanded the nation's immigration detention system by more than 50 percent, with contracts for private companies to operate at least 40 new detention facilities. Companies including GEO Group, CoreCivic and LaSalle Corrections own or operate facilities that jail the majority of immigrants. All but one of Louisiana's nine facilities are run by private prison firms. The 400-bed detention center in Alexandria is run by GEO Group, whose stock is valued at roughly $4 billion. Inside, dorm-style units hold up to 80 people each, and each includes an expansive 'processing area' with rows of benches and walls lined with hundreds of shackles. People who are processed at the facility from arriving flights are placed in five-point restraints and forced to sit on the benches, according to immigration attorneys. Before it opened in 2014, ICE transported people by bus from different jails to a local commercial airport or Alexandria International Airport, a converted military base that has emerged as what human rights groups called a 'national nerve center' for ICE Air, the group of charter airlines contracted with the agency to operate deportation flights. 'Alexandria allows the concentrated detention and staging of hundreds of people at a time, optimizing efficiency of ICE's deportation machine,' according to a 2024 report from a coalition of human rights groups. In August 2017, the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties found that the Alexandria facility 'is not properly screening for and identifying detainees at risk for suicide' and 'does not provide mental health treatment and programming,' the report found. That civil rights office was among bureaus within Homeland Security that have been abruptly shuttered under Trump's second administration. Alexandria is a two-hour drive from Baton Rouge and more than three hours away from New Orleans, where most of the state's immigration attorneys live and practice. That distance has made access to legal counsel for the nearly 8,000 people in Louisiana's detention facilities enormously difficult. There is little if any access to the internet or law libraries and few chances to privately speak with family or attorneys. To visit detainees at another facility, the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, roughly 200 miles from New Orleans, Tulane University law professor Mary Yanik and students with the Immigrants' Rights Law Clinic said they leave by 5:30 a.m. and return as late as 10 p.m., in order to speak with as many people as possible. 'That is a grueling schedule, if you think about the number of hours for a single visit with a client for a single court hearing,' she told The Independent earlier this year. 'They feel forgotten. They feel like they're screaming into a void.' The most common question among them is 'why am I here?' 'They're so disoriented by what was happening to them, and so confused. At least one person thought they were in Texas,' she said. ''What is going on? Can't I just go home?''
BreakingNews.ie
an hour ago
- BreakingNews.ie
'It is a terrible deal': UCD economist says EU was 'robbed' in US negotiations
The EU-US deal confirmed earlier this week was "terrible" and the trading bloc was "robbed" during negotiations, according to a professor of economics at University College Dublin (UCD). On Sunday, t he United States and the European Union agreed to a trade deal setting a 15 per cent tariff on most goods, staving off higher import taxes on both sides that might have sent shockwaves through economies around the world. Advertisement While the overall reaction to the deal has been positive — with the Taoiseach saying it " avoided a damaging trade war " — others have been more critical of the agreement. Speaking to UCD professor of economics, Ronald Davies said the EU gave in too easy to Donald Trump. "Essentially, Trump said: 'Give me your wallet and your car'. We gave him the car. 'So, yeah, we got to keep the wallet, but we still got robbed." Advertisement Prof Davies said people can paint it as it could have been worse, "but this was in no way a deal: we got mugged." He claims Ursula von der Leyen should have initiated a trade war with Trump as "he is somebody that only respects force, to the extent he respects anything." "People can have differing opinions on what the better approach is. I think Europe needs to cut the US out entirely," he said. Prof Davis thinks the EU should reorganise their supply chains and bypass the US entirely. Advertisement "What I'm saying is, if progress is going to be made on a global scale, it is got to be Europe, working with China or working with Latin America." While that may seem extreme, I asked him whether he thinks it is worth renegotiating with a possibly less unpredictable Democrat administration in four years. His outlook was quite bleak: "The reason why it does not matter is that the US is fundamentally broken. "You can tell by the accent where I grew up, right? I've been in Ireland for nearly 20 years now. I think it's just going to be this pendulum swinging back and forth. Advertisement "In terms of its own domestic, internal policies, the US will make no progress. Every incoming administration is just going to try to undo what the last one did, and whatever they achieve is going to be undone by the next." In terms of how the deal will impact the European single market, being part of a globalised world complicates things. "This deal is going to have an impact on European consumers," he said, noting half of what the US imports are intermediate inputs from other countries, including Europe. "60 per cent of what Europe imports are intermediate inputs, including what we get from the US. The idea that we are not adding the tariff and therefore not going to have higher prices, while being part of global supply chains, does not work." Advertisement In 2024, Irish exports to the United States totalled $78.61 billion (€67.45 billion), with pharmaceutical products accounting for $33 billion or 42 per cent of all exports. How the deal will impact Irish businesses overall depends on the sector in question. Elastic products Photo:"So, the question is, okay, if prices go up by 15 per cent, how much are (US) consumers going to buy for something like alcohol? He described it as an elastic product, so if Irish whiskey is more expensive, consumers might switch to scotch or Kentucky bourbon because there is only a 10 per cent tariff on it. 'That is something where people actually have the ability to move to a different product easily or cut back. 'Something like dairy or butter, that is also one that I think is probably fairly elastic too." He has concerns about the Irish agri-food sector and how there could be a drop in demand for Irish produce as a result. Meanwhile, for pharmaceuticals, it is a different story. "If you cannot get your usual drug. What's the next best option? A lot of the time, there is not one. "Ireland is the leading producer of Viagra, you know, if you cannot get your magic blue pill, what's the next best option?" The long-term outlook makes for grim reading, with tariffs likely to add to the already skyrocketing cost of living. "This is not going to be good. We will sort of bump along for a while until things even out. But, you know, it is a trade war and make no mistake, we are in a trade war. 'We just kind of surrendered. There is also the Russian-Ukraine war, there is an impending AI war. It is going to be a turbulent decade," he said. Ultimately, the deal for the EU is about bringing some semblance of certainty to things, even if that means taking a substantial hit in the short term. "They are saying, 'Okay, this is a crap deal, but it's 15 per cent; we know what's going on. Now let's get on with things'." World US-EU deal sets 15% tariff on most goods and avert... Read More In terms of how quickly we can expect to see the impact of the deal on prices, there will be some lag. "It will take a while. Even in the US, where they have had the tariffs, at some level, they have not seen prices go up as fast as one might expect. "That is because there is a lot of drawing down of stockpiles in place before tariffs kicked in. Come autumn, those stockpiles are going to be largely evaporated. That is when the US will start to see prices rise," he said. For Europe, Davis reckons it will be hard to pinpoint when exactly we could see the impact, but as winter comes along and rising energy costs ensue, we will likely see the real impact of this deal.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
The US immigration system is being militarized. Now is the time to stand up
On the Fourth of July, President Trump signed his sweeping signature domestic policy bill into law. He called it 'beautiful'. I would call it a grave and existential threat to our already precarious democracy. Perhaps the biggest headline to emerge from this bill is that it tears giant holes into our social safety net to ensure our nation's wealthiest could benefit from additional tax breaks. But for those of us on the frontlines of the fight to protect immigrants' rights, it signaled the further entrenchment of an authoritarian regime being created on the backs of immigrants. Irrespective of our immigration status or views on immigration, we should all be concerned because we will all be affected: the sheer quantity of resources set aside for immigration enforcement will turbocharge the militarization of our country. History has taught us that social justice movements can play a significant role in protecting democracies when they are at risk from authoritarian regimes. This bill should be a wakeup call for us all to step up in defense of our democracy before it is too late. Here is what we should anticipate. The law hands over a staggering $170bn to the Department of Homeland Security to ramp up this administration's brutal immigration enforcement agenda. Among the direct beneficiaries of this largesse is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Even without these resources, Ice has already been responsible for outrageous and unconstitutional acts that are hacking away at our democracy. It is Ice agents in masks who are kidnapping our neighbors, snatching them off the streets, at courthouses or their workplaces, shoving them into SUVs, and taking them to detention centers. Many have been deported without even being given the right to go before a judge. Ice agents are using unimaginably harsh tactics. They are violently smashing car windows, ripping parents away from their kids, and targeting children at school. The audacity of their lawlessness and cruelty – often on public display – is unprecedented. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to crack down violently on those who speak out against its immigration policies. Even public officials have been caught in this dragnet, including California senator Alex Padilla, New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver, Newark mayor Ras Baraka, and New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander. Every one of these violent encounters has been caught on film. With this new and massive infusion of resources now being handed over to the DHS and Ice, we will soon see many more abductions on our streets, more family separations, and more brutal crackdowns on dissenters. We are also likely to see the widespread militarization of our communities, consistent with what has already transpired in parts of California: heavily armed military officers in battle fatigues carrying out violent raids with the use of tear gas and rubber bullets; the storming of public venues such as MacArthur Park in Los Angeles for no reason other than to instill fear and intimidation; and government-sanctioned attempts to silence and intimidate public officials and activists through arrests, violence, criminal sanctions and prosecutions. As scenes previewed by militarized Los Angeles become commonplace in cities across the country – in blue states, to make an example, and in red states eager to collude – many more Americans will perhaps come to realize the full impact of this bill and recognize that the same system that cages immigrants closes rural hospitals. The same ideology that justifies family separation does not flinch when taking away food from the hungry. A government that disappears immigrants to foreign torture prisons without a day in court cannot be trusted to uphold your rights either. The machine of state violence, once built, expands. So, what are we to do? How do we move forward? It is incumbent on all of us to double down and meet the moment with the urgency it demands. That means committing to doing what we can to protect the most vulnerable amongst us and hold public officials accountable. We must be loud in our opposition to the attacks on our democracy and actively exercise our freedoms to protect it. We must contact our members of Congress to demand that they uphold the rule of law and take on those actively working to undermine our system of checks and balances. We must join the protests and the growing movement of people from all walks of life who are actively fighting authoritarianism. We must do everything we can to support our immigrant friends, neighbors and community members whose lives are being torn apart by this administration. Finally, we must also vigorously reject the paralyzing lure of fatalism – that the future will merely be an extension of our present rather than something we can build together. If our government can pour boundless resources into hurting people, there is nothing radical or unrealistic in insisting that those same resources could be used to better all of our lives. Sign up to Fighting Back Big thinkers on what we can do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. From our opinion desk. after newsletter promotion At the National Immigration Law Center, we will continue using every tool at our disposal to fight back against Trump's attacks on our communities. We are clear eyed about how we got here and what the stakes are. Just because this moment demands defense, it will not stop us from standing firm in the declaration that a pathway to a better world still exists. What's giving me hope now is the number of people who are joining a rapidly growing movement fighting back against this administration's authoritarian plans. They include courageous immigrants who refuse to be silenced or dehumanized; retirees who are spending time being of service to impacted immigrants, engaging elected officials and/or attending rallies and town halls; courageous young people who refuse to accept the status quo and are putting their bodies on the line; and entire communities who are speaking out and doing everything possible to protect their neighbors. All of us have a role in upholding justice and preserving our democracy. I'm heartened to see people from all walks of life determined to do their part and remain optimistic that this movement will get bigger and stronger over time. Kica Matos is president of the National Immigration Law Center
