‘The policy may very well fail’: JD Vance doubted Trump’s first-term trade policies, previously bashed tariffs

From Skeptic to Soldier: JD Vance and the Reinvention of Economic Nationalism

As the Rose Garden basked in spring sunlight, Vice President JD Vance stood and applauded—front row, unwavering—as President Donald Trump unveiled a sweeping new wave of tariffs, heralded as “Liberation Day.” Factories, Trump declared, would roar again. Jobs would return. The era of economic submission was over.

But not long ago, Vance’s applause might have been silence.

Once a vocal critic of protectionist trade policy and a self-described “Never Trump guy,” Vance built his early political identity on a starkly different vision—one that saw manufacturing decline as the child of automation, not outsourcing, and warned against the seduction of retrograde economic fantasies.

Now, he is the architect-in-chief of Trump’s trade revival.

A View From the Past

Between 2016 and 2019, as he rode the wave of acclaim from Hillbilly Elegy and stepped into the national conversation, Vance offered a sobering diagnosis of American industrial decline. “So many of these jobs just aren’t coming back,” he said bluntly in early 2017. The villain, he insisted, wasn’t trade deals—it was the relentless march of machines.

He echoed voices like Senator Ben Sasse, cautioning that retraining and re-education—not tariffs—were the tools of the future. Globalization, Vance argued, had created pain, but to turn back the tide would be to wage “yesterday’s war.”

“Maybe we could have fought that fight in the ’80s,” he told a university crowd. “But we’ve already lost that battle in some ways.”

Back then, he warned against “hyper-protectionism,” labeled trade fights as distractions, and doubted that policies could ever bring coal or steel back from economic extinction. “If people have dignified work in next-generation industries,” he mused, “they won’t care that Trump didn’t bring back the steel jobs.”

The Pivot

Then came 2020—and a transformation not of policy, but of identity.

By the end of Trump’s first term, Vance’s rhetoric began to shift. In October 2019, he called the argument that automation, not trade, was to blame for job loss “a bad argument.” By 2020, he cast his ballot for Trump. In 2021, he ran for Senate as a MAGA candidate—and won.

Now, as vice president, Vance stands as one of the chief evangelists for Trump’s economic vision. Tariffs are no longer yesterday’s war—they are the front lines of a new economic revolution.

“Vice President Vance has been crystal clear,” his spokesperson said this week. “He has always stood for American workers.” The statement made no mention of the long trail of quotes, posts, and interviews that once charted a different course.

Rewriting the Narrative

This reversal is not uncommon in Washington. But Vance’s pivot is striking for its completeness.

The man who once told CNN that “the jobs are already gone” now cheers a “declaration of economic independence.” The author who once said America must “train for the next economy” now champions a bid to restore the old one.

Critics call it opportunism. Supporters call it evolution. Vance calls it “evidence.”

He says Trump’s first term changed his mind. He says the data shifted. That results—not ideology—reshaped his belief.

Still, even at the height of Trump’s tariff push in his first term, Vance remained skeptical. “FWIW, my guess is the policy may very well fail,” he wrote in 2019. He worried then that Beijing would wait Trump out, and that protectionism could collapse under a Biden presidency.

Today, that caution is gone. As Trump leads a second charge toward economic nationalism, Vance follows—not reluctantly, but loudly.

A Mirror of the Movement

Vance’s transformation mirrors the larger arc of the Republican Party’s shift. What was once a party of free markets and globalization is now defined by trade walls and industrial policy.

In that way, Vance is not merely following Trump—he is becoming the movement’s reflection: an intellectual-turned-insurgent, a skeptic-turned-crusader.

And as he claps in the Rose Garden beneath banners of economic “liberation,” the reinvention is complete. JD Vance is no longer warning about the future.

He’s trying to rewrite it.

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