JD Vance is urging Americans living paycheck to paycheck to stick with the pain caused by President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, claiming that the results will be worth it in the long run.
Trump’s decision to impose the highest tariffs in the U.S. in over a century has already caused damage to the economy, sending stock prices down and putting pressure on the dollar. This has also raised concerns about a potential global recession. In response to the growing unease, Vance appeared on Fox News to deliver a message of patience.
During a Fox & Friends interview, co-host Lawrence Jones acknowledged that while many Trump supporters are cheering on the tariffs, some Americans are feeling the financial strain. “A lot of folks are living paycheck to paycheck,” Jones said. “They want to do the patriotic duty of taking it to these other countries, but it’s going to hit them a little bit, they feel.”
Jones then asked Vance what he would say to people who “just can’t afford an extra three dollars here and there” and whether the government plans to help those who are struggling. “Will cost go up at some point?” Jones asked. “Will this just be temporary? Are we talking three months or six months?”
Vance, who grew up in a working-class family and is now worth around $10 million, said he understood the concerns of those who are struggling financially.
“I grew up in a family that often did live paycheck to paycheck, and we know a lot of Americans are worried,” Vance said. “So we are fighting very hard to bring prices down. We’re going to have the biggest deregulation in the history of this country.”
He continued, “What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we are not going to fix things overnight. Joe Biden left us—this is not an exaggeration, Lawrence—with the largest peacetime debt and deficit in the history of the United States of America, with sky-high interest rates. You don’t fix that stuff overnight.”
Vance did not elaborate on how the tariffs would specifically fix these problems but explained that the Trump administration believes policies aimed at reducing energy costs and cutting regulations will eventually help American consumers.
Watch the full exchange in the video below from Fox News:
