JD Vance fires back at critics of Trump tariffs, addresses Elon Musk's DOGE future
Vice President JD Vance joins Lawrence Jones on ‘FOX & Friends’ to break down the Trump administration’s 'Liberation Day' tariffs and denies reports that Elon Musk is leaving the DOGE team.
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday discussed the economy and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) work in a wide-ranging interview on "FOX & Friends."
The vice president sat down with "FOX & Friends" co-host Lawrence Jones on Thursday morning, one day after President Donald Trump unveiled a 10% tariff on imported goods from foreign countries and "individualized reciprocal higher" tariffs on certain countries, marking the latest levies that the president has sought since taking office in January.
From left, second lady Usha Vance, Vice President JD Vance, President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the departure ceremony for outgoing President Joe Biden and outgoing first lady Dr. Jill Biden on the East Front of the U.S (Chris Kleponis/Pool via Reuters / Reuters Photos)
During the "FOX & Friends" interview, Vance voiced skepticism about America benefiting from a "globalist economy" and said the president is "taking this economy in a different direction" when asked about the administration's tariffs.
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He told Jones that "incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make us" was "not a recipe for economic prosperity."
"For 40 years, we have gone down that pathway. We’ve seen closing factories, we’ve seen rising inflation. We’ve seen the cost of housing so high that most Americans can’t afford to buy a home right now," he said. "President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction."
Vance recognized that the Trump administration’s policies were a "big change" but contended the U.S. "cannot keep going down the Joe Biden globalist pathway where we have $2 trillion of peacetime debt and deficits."
Jones asked the vice president about Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck who could feel the sting of higher prices, to which the vice president said the Trump administration was "fighting very hard" to lower them and "going to have the biggest deregulation" in the country’s history.
"What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we are not going to fix things overnight," Vance said, claiming the Biden administration left Trump and him the "largest peacetime debt and deficit in the history of the United States of America" and extremely high interest rates.
He said the Trump administration believes the "right deregulation" will help Americans financially and make their jobs more secure because foreign countries "can’t take advantage of us anymore."
Vice President JD Vance delivers a speech during the plenary session of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris on Feb. 11. (Reuters/Benoit Tessier / Reuters)
Vance also argued that the tax cuts that the Trump administration is poised to pursue are "all part of the same policy" as the tariffs rather than a way to offset them.
Since Trump and Vance took office, their administration has not only been busy revamping the country’s trade policy, but also with significantly paring back spending and boosting efficiency across the federal government through DOGE, which has been helmed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Politico, citing unnamed sources, reported Wednesday that Trump let his Cabinet and inner circle know that Musk’s departure from DOGE was coming soon, with the Tesla CEO reportedly poised to move to more of a supporting role.
Vance called such reports "total fake news."
"Elon came in, and we said, ‘We need you to make government more efficient. We need you to shrink the incredible, vast bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people, but also costs way too much money.’ And we said that’s going to take about six months, and that’s what Elon signed up for," the vice president told Jones.
The tech billionaire has led DOGE as a "special government employee." Special government employees are allowed to work for the federation government for a maximum of 130 days a year.
Vance said the Tesla CEO will keep serving as an advisor, adding that the work of DOGE and Musk is "not even close to done."
"DOGE has a lot of work to do and, yeah, that work’s gonna continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and advisor to both me and the president, and he’s done a lot of good things."
President-elect Donald Trump walks with Elon Musk, left, before attending a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, on Nov. 19, 2024. (Brandon Bell/Pool via Reuters TPX Images of the Day / Reuters)
Vance said that DOGE has "started to chip away" at the government bureaucracy but "there’s a lot of work to do."
"It’s not going to happen all in six months," he said. "It’s going to take a long and committed effort."
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DOGE has a goal of reducing federal spending by $2 trillion. It claimed total estimated savings of $140 billion on its website as of Thursday.
Musk said in an interview last week with Fox News host Bret Baier that he thought DOGE "will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars" within his special government employee timeframe.
Under the executive order Trump signed to officially form DOGE, the group is supposed to finish its cost-cutting efforts by early July of next year.
