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The former US Vice President Mike Pence taking a critical stance on President Trump's tariffs, writing in a Wall Street Journal op ed in the past few months that since the President announced his Liberation Day tariffs, the only thing America has been limerated from is trillions of dollars in investments, and pleased to say, the forty eighth Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, joined us Now for more. It's the Vice president of Mornick.
Good morning, Thanks for having me on.
Thank you for being here. I want to pick up on a question I know you've been exploring. What can forty seven learn from forty five. Let's start there and talk about trade.
Well.
Well, first off, I want to give President Trump all the credit in the world for a historic political comeback. But in that Republican primary I was traveling as a candidate in twenty twenty three, I mostly heard people saying, we want to get back in the midst of the failed economic policies of the Biden administration. We want to get back to what the Trump pens administration was advancing.
And so in the Wall Street Journal, I gave the president great credit high marks for securing the border, for restoring morale and recruitment in our military, for taking the fight to the Hoho Thies. Since then, we'll talk more later. I'm very encouraged about the strong stand that the President is taking on the world stage, particularly in the Middle.
East and in Eastern Europe.
But what I wanted to call attention to was the policy toward tariffs was changed with Liberation Day. During our administration, we used tariffs in the threat of tariffs principally focused on China to leverage changes in behavior, but the objective
was to essentially lower trade barriers and expand trade. In this administration, I think what we saw several months ago, now it's paused again happily, is the kind of broad based industrial policy that I think ultimately will harm the American economy, will harm American consumers, and so we've spoken out against it. We've tried to take a stand what I like to say, free trade with free nations.
Be tough on China, be tough on.
Trade abusers, but have the objective of ultimately lowering trade barriers, and that's how America wins and prospers. That's how we wonder in our first term.
You've identified that change. What's your understanding of what's behind it, what's let that change?
Well, I think that what's changed is that I think the President feels at least I perceive it. You know, sometimes I tell people that I know President Trump better than his most ardent defenders. We served together for four and a half years. We had a close working relationship, and I've said many times President Trump is not an isolationist. He is someone deeply committed to free market capitalism. But for all of his career he has been very sympathetic
to protectionist thinking in philosophy. You can go back thirty years on YouTube and find Donald Trump saying the same things that President Trump is saying today. He and I had many vigorous conversations during our four years about trade. I come from one of the leading exporting states in the country.
What we make, we grow in Indiana, we sell to the world.
But at the end of the day, I think what you're seeing is not different influences around President Trump. I think you're simply seeing him extending out into a philosophy of government and economics that he has long believed.
Were these impulses. Then there when he during the first administration, and individuals like you maybe talked him out of it.
Well, I don't know that it was.
There were a few times that I saw him change his mind on things, but I think it was more about priorities in the first term, to make sure that we passed the tax cuts, rolled back regulation, unleashed American energy,
and we changed the national consensus on China. China with its years of trade abuses, and I played a leading role in articulating that in the early going, and I'm incredibly proud of that record and glad that at least the Biden administration didn't change the tariff policy toward China.
But for me, it was more about.
It was more about driving toward free trade agreement. So I had the privilege of announcing the beginning of a free trade agreement with UK in the City of London. We renegotiated a free trade agreement with South Korea that's back in the news this week with new tariff threats, and I was leading with my counterpart in Japan. I was actually tasked with leading a working group for a free trade agreement with Japan. So for US, it was that we saw an expansion of trade and opening markets.
As a key part of American growth right now.
I actually believe that President Trump is driving toward a long term change in industrial policy in America where he sees permanent unilateral trade tariff barriers as beneficial to America in the long term, and I, as a free market conservative, as something I just don't embrace.
Can you do that and isolate China with the rest of the world on board at the same time, Well, a.
Marie, I think that's the right question that Senator Phil Graham. We had on Capitol Hill with our foundation yesterday, had over one hundred staffers that came out to hear him. He had probably the best description of it, he said.
He said, by going after all of your the free nations that you're trading with at the same time that you're trying to bring China farther along into opening markets and ending years of trade abuses, he said, it's like it's like dismissing your front line in a football game
and expecting that you're going to take on the other side. Look, we need Japan, we need South Korea, we need Australia, we need the EU to continue to bring the kind of economic pressure on China that I believe is all that President g and the Chinese Communist Party will will respect.
We saw some change.
Remember that Phase one trade deal in the early days of twenty twenty. Most people have long since forgotten it. There were bigger stories that year by far, but we saw the China when we imposed those two hundred and fifty billion dollars in tariffs. The Chinese to the table quickly and began negotiations. And I still believe that's the right approach, with free trade, with free nations being the backstop.
Mister Vice President, I want to pick out a line in that Wall Street Journal up ed that John was mentioning that you wrote, mister Trump's proposed tariffs would be the largest peacetime hike in American history, harming consumers and driving inflation. President Trump his administration has been talking about they're not going to be inflationary, that the producers and other countries are going to absorb it. Are you seeing
evidence that that's not the case. Are you really concerned about what this does to the economy.
Well, I really am, and I understand that that's the debate right now. We haven't seen the inflation from Liberation Day and I think there's several reasons to explain that.
Number one is.
The terriff regime was paused and has now been paused again, and the markets and are responding to that, businesses are responding. Secondly, I got to tell you the businesses I talk to as I travel around the country have been spending an awful lot of money on inventory right now. You know, there's an old saying that where I come from, the you know, I was born in the morning, but not yesterday morning. So people say that these tariffs are coming, so why don't we Why don't we fill the warehouse
right now? And I think that's wise, But you know, at the end of the day, I also think that you know, the President on Liberation Day talked about twenty five percent, fifty percent, seventy percent tariffs on countries, and seeing some of these early frameworks that end up with the UK with ten percent, there's a temptation to say, well, that's just ten percent, And so I think that's the reason why markets, so my businesses have not adjusted prices yet.
But if we have a unilateral tariff of ten percent on the American economy of all important goods, that's four.
Times the average tariff to day.
And the reality is that I watch, you know, I spent a lot of time in that cabinet room. I watched a little bit of the cabinet meeting this week, and I saw Secretary Besson speaking very glowingly about the projection is three hundred billion dollars in tariff revenue this year. Well, tariffs are a tax, and American importers and businesses and ultimately consumers.
Pay almost all of that.
And so literally a week after we managed to extend the Trumpets tax cuts and prevent a two thousand dollars tax increase on working families, the administration is right now boasting of the fact that the average American household is going to see about three thousand dollars increase in the cost of goods because we're paying that. So that's why I referred to a liberation day. I said, could well be the largest peacetime tax in American history.
We've been pushing back on that.
I welcome the pauses, but I I really do believe the antidote here is free trade with free nations. Tough on China, but continue continue to drive toward lowering trade barriers, and and you know, non tariff subsidient.
He reflects the inflation risk. The White House of say like this federer'sf to cut interest rates. You've been in the room a few times. I'm sure it's talking about this veederic f. How did the President end up with a FED chat the heat dislikes so much? How did that happen?
Well, well, I've been watching a lot of what the presidents had to say about J.
Powell lately, and.
He did appoint him, So it's part of the awkward aspect here. Well, first, I think the President of the United States is fully entitled to express his opinion about both the FED share and about the Federal Reserve itself.
I have long had great.
Concerns about the dual mandate and the Federal Reserve. I think it confuses the issue. The Federal Reserve has this for your viewers, has a dual mandate to protect the integrity of the dollar and achieve full employment. Look, I think the Federal Reserve ought to just focus on the dollar.
And I think that the hesitation that I have seen from the FED chair and ostensibly the Committee is that the uncertainty around these broad based tariffs and the potential for inflation has slowed their intention and their earlier efforts at lowering rates, and so how the president got to where he can He considers the Federal Reserve chairman to
be worthy of the nickname too late. I can't really testify, but to me, you know, pushing back on the idea that what seems to be holding up the Federal Reserve. Although I read this morning there's now more vigorous debate.
I'm sure you've covered here on Bloomberg.
Ye on the committee as that there we may have lowering of interest rates, which certainly would welcome.
As you know, the president, one of his greatest strength is to break the status quoud and have very little respect for it. That limits to that, and it's fed independence and example of it.
That's right, And I think, look, the President appoints the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and a careful study of American history shows I don't really accept that the Federal Reserve should be a completely separate agency, you know, like a college of cardinals that we never refer to other than in.
Respectful hush tones.
John, I think the president ought to be able to express himself. Elected officials ought to be able to express themselves, because it's almost like that old saying about the Supreme Court. You know that justices do read the newspaper, and I expect that's also true of members of the Federal Reserve.
You have taken a balance view on the current administration. You've been somewhat critically of trains. We've discussed that, I would say, ringing endulsement about that approach to the Middle East. So let's talk about that. Where you were in your first term with the president, where he is in his second term, and what went wrong in between. From your standpoint on the Middle East, Well, I.
Just think when Joe Biden returned to a policy of appeasement toward Iran, it really emboldened the enemies of Israel across the region.
I traveled to Israel.
About six months after October seventh and saw what occurred there, and I would tell you it's one of the things I'm probably most proud of our administration. Not only did we changed in the national consensus on China, but we were probably the most pro Israel administration since the re establishment of the State of Israel in nineteen forty eight. There's just simply to recognize it.
Moving the American.
Embassy to Jerusalem recognizing the Golanites.
These were all.
Historic achievements that everyone told us would foment violence and discord across the Middle East. But again another twenty twenty story that is long forgotten by many people. As the Abraham, of course, I mean we actually demonstrated that when you stand without in an unwavering way with Israel that I call our most cherished ally throughout our history, it sends a very clear signal that makes peace more possible, not
less possible. We also isolated Iran as never before. We unleashed our military to take down the ISIS Caliphate, and of course the President made the decision to take down Acostam Salomoni.
The head of the Iran Revolutionary Guard.
All of that had had Iran on its back heels. The Biden administration changed that went back to the Obama approach of re engaging with the Mullahs in Tehran. I think they were emboldened the violence that we saw, whether it be October seventh with Hamas one of their patron
groups or the Houthis, all were resolved. I've always believed that that weakness arouses evil, but peace comes through strength and in the weakness of the Biden administration, I think created conditions for the mayhem that the new Trump administration inherited.
And that's why I've.
I've been so encouraged to see the strong stand the President has taken with Israel. We publicly encouraged the use of American military assets.
If Iran was not willing to dismantle their.
Nuclear program, I believe it needed to be destroyed. And I commend the President for his decisive leadership in our incredible airman who delivered those payloads.
You welcomed those strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities, But the President still talks about a deal with Iran. Do you think he'll do a deal at any cost?
Well, I hope not.
I said in that Wall Street Journal piece that you cited. It was about two months ago, and one of my concerns, in addition to some of the tariff issues that we talked about, was that a lot of what we were hearing from the administration in the first hundred days sounded an awful lot like a new Iran nuclear deal, and we pushed back on that pretty hard.
And I.
My hope is that the President, having having seen both the run up to the need for American action and also the response by the Mullas and Tehran. We'll he'll keep his on the holster and look ultimately for achieving the objective that has been the stated US policy through multiple administrations, that Ran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon or have a nuclear program of any kind.
When it comes to foreign policy, you've been very critical and hawkish on Russia in the debate when you were running with President Trump in the first term, you called Putin a small and bullying dictator. Why do you think Trump has only just started changing his tune when it comes to Vladimir Putin.
Well, I've never had any illusions about Vladimir Putin.
No, but President Trump has.
Well, that remains to be seen.
I would tell you that, you know, I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee when I was in the Congress. I've been a student of Vladimir Putin. He's never made a secret of his ambitions in Eastern Europe. It's something he's spoken about, written about. His aim has always been to re established the old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. And I really do believe it was our administration in the Trump Pence years that were the first
to literally provide lethal aid to Ukraine. I think that's what discouraged Putin from crossing.
That border during those four years.
Forget, and I think it continues to be the only pathway toward peace today.
But forgive me, mister Vice President, to go back to Emory's question, what's changed, because right now we've seen a president who's warned against Russia doing crossing certain real lines, Russia's crossed, and then the sanctions haven't come. What do you think is going on?
Well, I'm hopeful that they will.
What makes you I am I've seen some statements by my friend Senator Lindsey Graham, who just in the last few days said that the President told him to move the bill. And these new Russia sanctions, which are secondary sanctions against people that are doing business with Russia that are subsidizing the war effort by oil purchases and energy purchases,
I think could be enormously impactful. But uh, you know, I would I would say that, you know, I've made it very clear that that that my deep conviction is that Vladimir Putin doesn't want peace. Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine and despite the stops and starts that gave them any of us concern, including that famous Oval Office meeting between the President and President Zelenski, who I came to know well.
I sense that my old running mate.
Is coming around to recognizing Putin's real intentions here.
I mean when I think that.
The the clear irritation in the President's voice of having a conversation and then to see some of the some of the worst drone attacks launched in Kiev within a matter of hours, is I think having its effect. But look, I just think that I was pleased that the President countermanded what had been a pause of aid to Ukraine last week, which I think was unfortunate wherever it originated.
But I commend the President for reversing that decision. And my hope is when the Senate reconvenes that that Senator Thunal will put the the Graham bill on the floor and.
Put it on the President's desk.
I think it's time and and it's my judgment. I've met Vladimir Putin, I've stood with him closer than I'm sitting next to you. I've told him things he didn't want to hear, and I think he is. I think he is not a man who understands anything other than strength.
And this is a moment, I think where it's in the interest of our country, it's in the interest of our allies in the region and long term peace in Eastern Europe for US to continue to provide military support to Ukraine, to put punishing sanctions on Russia until the just lasting peace can be secured.
Mister Vice President, I appreciate your time, set enjoyed the Commas action great. It's going to say it, thank you. They form the Vice President of the United States that Mike Pence