Former vice president Mike Pence criticized President Donald Trump’s approach to tariffs, as well as several foreign policy initiatives, In an interview with Sunday “Meet The Press” by NBC News.
“The initial reciprocal rates that it presented would be the greatest increase of taxes in peacetime in the American people in the history of this country,” Pence told Moderator Kristen Welker, referring to radical tariffs imposed on the largest commercial partners of the United States in early April.
Days later, the president arrested most rates, a measure that Pence on Friday said he was “happy” to see.
The interview covered a wide range of issues, and Pence opened with extensive praise for the second Trump administration, applauding the president for having “secured the southern border in a historical way” and ordering military actions against the hutis in Yemen, among other things.
“But in the midst of all that, I have seen some deviation from the policies of our administration both at home and abroad,” Pence said. He mentioned the “hesitant support” for Ukraine in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term and criticized a potential vision for a nuclear agreement with Iran. And he was especially critical of Trump’s tariffs.
The former vice president said that his main concern with Trump’s current plan, which is to negotiate trade agreements that could still include tariffs in most nations, is that he will lead to higher prices for Americans.
He added that the president’s current plan is “very different” of how Trump’s first administration, in which Pence served as vice president, operated.
“We use the threat of tariffs a lot as leverage for negotiations, Kristen,” Pence said, and added later: “What I see in this administration is a constant impulse towards a baseline of perhaps even 10% of tariffs that I think would be harmful to work in the United States. It would be harmful to consumers in the United States.”
Pence also criticized Trump’s frequent line on who pays tariffs when they are imposed.
“As the president has told me many times, he has the feeling that other countries pay tariffs,” said Pence, “when reality is, when Americans buy goods abroad, the company that matters those goods in this country pays the rate and most of the time that happens in higher prices to consumers.”
Vance points of view and the role of the vice president
When asked if he opposed the tariffs on certain consumer goods that Trump imposed during his first term, Pence admitted that he probably had, but privately.
“I probably did it in the halls, but the president can make the decision,” Pence said.
“When you are vice president of the United States, my opinion is always this: I would favor the president, with the full range of my opinion in private,” Pence said. “And then, when he made the decision, my work was to support his decision in the absence of a higher call or a superior obligation that one has.”
Previously in the interview, Pence also talked about the lawyer who expects Trump to receive from those around him now, including vice president JD Vance.
“President Trump was not just my president. He was my friend,” Pence said, describing his relationship with Trump during his first term, which he got rid after Pence resisted Trump’s pressure to use his role to try to cancel the electoral results of 2020 when Congress met to tell the votes of the Electoral University on January 6, 2021.
“I took the opportunity in the right environment, the private moments, to share with him those moments when we differ in the problems,” Pence said. “And my hope is, be it the vice president or others, that there are those voices around the president who do the same.”
The former vice president revolved when he was asked how he believes that the current vice president is doing at work, with Pence simply saying that “he would have difficulty evaluating him precisely, but [Vance is] An honorable man. “
Foreign policy
Pence also talked about Trump’s approach to foreign policy in this term. He told Welker that it is “a bad idea” that the president accepts a plane as a gift from Qatar’s royal family, in the midst of Trump planning to do so and criticized Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia.
The former vice president also questioned the Trump administration approach to Iran, while the senior US officials seek to reach an agreement with Iran on the possession of the uranium nation and nuclear technology.
Pence said he is concerned about the reports that Iran is trying to maintain a civil nuclear program, and tells Welker that the United States “should make clear in negotiations with Iran that its current nuclear program must be dismantled or destroyed.”
“I am Grateful that President Trump You have reiterated the policy of our administration, that Iran Will not be allowed to obtain to nuclear weapon. The Security of America, The Security of Israel, The Stability of the Region and the World Demands that we When I Hear Talk About Allowing Iran to have an enrichment program at a certainty Level, It Sounds for All The World Like President Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal That We Got Out of In The First Year of Our Administration. “
“We need to clarify that the United States is not incaroleando, that we will not allow them to continue enriching Uranium,” Pence added.
When asked if an attack against Iran should be on the table as an option to press it to dismantle its nuclear program, Pence said: “Of course. I think all the options should be on the table.”
Pence also said that he believes that additional sanctions against Russia should be on the table, since Trump seeks the end of the country’s war in Ukraine, although the administration has said that such threats would damage the conversations he has established.
“I met Vladimir Putin. My judgment is Vladimir Putin only understands the force,” Pence said.
PARDONES OF JANUARY 6
Pence said: “I don’t see that in my future” when asked if he could run again for president, after having looked for the White House in 2023 without gaining much traction before leaving the race. His rest with Trump on the electoral results of 2020, which Trump repeatedly affirmed and falsely were tarnished by fraud, also damaged his political position in the Republican Party.
Pence said Trump was wrong to issue a general forgiveness of people who faced positions for participating in the disturbance of the Capitol of January 6.
“I will always believe by the grace of God that that day I had my duty to support and defend the constitution of the United States and see the peaceful transfer of power,” Pence said, then attracting a distinction among some defendants of January 6 that “they simply walked through an open door, it did not mean damage, they did not harm,” and those that were charged with more serious crimes.
“But the people who broke into the Capitol, who assaulted police officers, said that day and I think that until now they should have been prosecuted to the greater extent of the law,” Pence said.
