The Republican vice-presidential nominee tailored his remarks to audiences in two key swing states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
During back-to-back campaign stops in swing states on Aug. 28, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) told workers that he and former President Donald Trump are championing policies that will boost trucking and manufacturing with the aim to improve the economy for all Americans.
“We want truckers to be empowered instead of throttled,” Vance told people gathered at Team Hardinger, a trucking and warehousing company in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Hours later, Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, also campaigned in another battleground state, Wisconsin; there, he spoke at AmeriLux International, a manufacturer and distributor of building materials.
In both speeches, Vance pledged that if he and Trump win the Nov. 5 election, they will reverse policies that he said are hurting trucking, manufacturing, and the U.S. economy overall.
The policies of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have discouraged reliance on fossil fuels and favor electric-powered vehicles. The result has been increased costs for truckers, and hence, consumers, Vance said.
He noted that trucks haul food and goods to stores. “If the truckers are paying more for fuel, we’re all paying more for everything,” he said to the audience in De Pere, Wisconsin.
The American Trucking Association says that a typical long-haul, clean-diesel tractor costs about $200,000, while a comparable electric one costs nearly $500,000. About 95 percent of all trucking companies are small businesses with 10 trucks or fewer, the association adds, and they cannot afford the pricier electric trucks.
“If you force all these great truckers to buy electric trucks instead of the trucks they’re currently using, you’re going to make this inflation crisis way worse,” Vance told Pennsylvanians, urging people to vote for the Republican ticket rather than Democratic presidential nominee Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“You think [the prices of] groceries are bad, wait until Kamala Harris makes every American trucker drive an electric truck,” Vance said. “You think car prices are bad, wait until Kamala Harris makes everybody buy a Chinese-made electric vehicle.”
Such policies are “a disaster,” he said, “not just for truckers, but for everybody who relies on them, which is everybody.”
3 Steps to Lower Prices
Vance said that he and Trump will take three major steps to “end this horrible affordability crisis.”
First, they will halt the influx of illegal immigrants, who compete for wages against American workers.
Second, they will “stop ridiculous job-killing regulations like the EV [electric-vehicle] mandate.”
“And number three,” he said, “we are going to ‘drill, baby, drill.’ We’ve got plenty of energy right here in Pennsylvania. Let’s get it out of the ground with Pennsylvania workers.”
Policies adversely affecting American industry predate Harris’s role in the Biden White House, Vance said.
“There was a consensus in this country for 30 years that we didn’t need to make our own stuff. And so now, everything—from a lot of the steel that we rely on to the drugs that we put in the bodies of our children— … it’s made by our adversaries instead of made by American workers,” he said. “Wasn’t that stupid?”
But, Vance said, Trump is one political figure during his lifetime who said, “No more of this.” He credited Trump’s first term in 2017–2021 with creating “a bigger boom for American manufacturing and American energy than we’ve seen that benefits the people of Erie, Pennsylvania.”
Reminiscent of His Hometown
Vance described Erie as “a beautiful place” that has fallen by the wayside. He said it reminds him of the southwest Ohio city where he grew up, Middletown, which boasts “a proud manufacturing and proud steelmaking tradition.”
Erie, however, has been “left behind” because U.S. leaders “decided we were going to let companies make things using Chinese slave labor,” he said.
“And I happen to think we shouldn’t expect Americans to compete with a bunch of Chinese slave laborers,“ he said. ”We ought to expect American companies to hire American and build in the United States of America. And if you do more of that, you’re going to bring more jobs to Erie, Pennsylvania.”
During his speech in Wisconsin, Vance pointed out that Trump wants to “punish the companies that are doing business with the communist Chinese.”
One Thing Is ‘Broken’
Vance also told Wisconsinites that campaigning as vice president for the past six weeks has been “the greatest honor of my life” and has given him the opportunity to “see this country from a totally different perspective.”
This experience has shown him that “we have the most beautiful country in the entire world … we have got natural resources that are the envy of the entire world.”
“The Chinese and the Russians would kill for the stuff that we have right here in Wisconsin and all across our great country,” Vance said.
“We have the best workers and the best families anywhere in the world, and by the way, we’ve got the proudest cultural and historical traditions, I believe, that exist anywhere on the face of the earth.
“The only thing that is broken about this country is our failed leadership.”
Hope for the Future
He said that Trump, however, “is equal to the job of leading the American people.”
“Donald Trump is a president for every American citizen, rich or poor. We just want people to have a good life in this country that all of us love,” Vance said.
While Harris, Walz, and their supporters have often used the word “joy” when discussing their campaign, Vance said he reflected on the conditions affecting many people in the United States.
“A lot of our fellow citizens, especially the poorest Americans and a lot of our middle-class people, they can’t afford food; they can’t afford a place to live. … Young Americans want to be able to buy a house and they can’t afford it,” he said.
Still, he and Trump believe in “the very real hope that the best days of this country are ahead of us,” Vance said.
That’s because “we have the best people; we have the best workers,” and because Trump, if reelected as president, will “work for you every single day,” Vance said.
He urged: “Get out there and tell every person you know why you’re voting for Donald Trump. Get your friends and your family to the polls.”