WASHINGTON, D.C. — At Tuesday’s Vice Presidential debate, J.D. Vance will likely make a number of claims about trade policy and American jobs that he has been consistently making on the campaign trail. Vance has embraced populist rhetoric on trade to connect with voters’ real frustrations related to the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector and increased income inequality from past corporate-dominated trade deals, but many of his claims are disingenuous or flat out wrong. 

Some of Vance’s claims about trade and jobs to look out for: 

Vance’s Anticipated False Claim: Vice President Harris voted to keep the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in place when Trump renegotiated it. 

Reality: Vance has continued to make this claim, which has earned him four pinocchios by a Washington Post fact check. As a Senator, Vice President Harris voted against the US Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) because she believed the deal wasn’t strong enough on climate protections to justify her vote. Prior to that vote, she said she would not have supported the original NAFTA because it didn’t do enough to protect American workers. More recently, Vice President Harris said that the USMCA “made it far too easy for a major auto company like Stellantis to break their word to workers by outsourcing American jobs.”

Vance’s Anticipated False Claim: Trump’s USMCA solved the issue of U.S. jobs going to Mexico. 

Reality: The U.S.-Mexico trade deficit has gone up since the implementation of the USMCA, not down. American companies continued outsourcing jobs to Mexico as the USMCA went into law. In one case, a manufacturer did so only months after receiving $10 million in COVID-19 relief money from the Trump Administration. In another case, just a year after the USMCA took effect, an auto parts manufacturer controlled by Trump’s then Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross outsourced 300 jobs to Mexico. In the first six months of 2020, the DOL approved 15 petitions for trade assistance related to auto parts factories moving to Mexico.

Vance’s Anticipated False Claim: NAFTA was a “Democrat” trade deal. 

Reality: NAFTA was negotiated by a Republican President, George Bush. When Congress voted on the deal, the majority of Democrats in Congress voted against it, and the majority of Republicans voted for it.

Vance’s Anticipated False Claim: Key pieces of Biden administration legislation, like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), help China and sent a lot of jobs to China. 

Reality: The Chinese government is furious about the IRA and has actually initiated a dispute against the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that the legislation violates WTO rules by preferencing and protecting U.S. jobs. Last year, Vice President Harris helped bring the trade deficit with China to its lowest point in 15 years. Under Trump’s presidency, it hit the highest level in U.S. history. The IRA has had such a big impact that a number of Congressional Republicans have been urging Trump and Vance to not follow through on their threat to gut the IRA’s tax credits because they are creating jobs in their districts.

Vance’s Anticipated False Claim:The Biden administration protected green energy jobs at the expense of American jobs. Trump protected American jobs.

Reality: Trump made empty promises to protect manufacturing jobs, while the Biden-Harris administration has made real investments to create and support manufacturing jobs. While in office, for instance, Trump promised workers in Lordstown, Ohio that he would save their jobs from being outsourced to Mexico. But when the last of over 4,000 of those jobs went to Mexico under his watch, he did nothing. Thanks to the historic investments into clean energy manufacturing that Vice President Harris has helped put in place, over 1,000 auto jobs have come back to Lordstown in the form of EV and battery manufacturing. These jobs are part of massive manufacturing investments that are going disproportionately to towns that have lost jobs in the past. 

Vance’s Anticipated False Claim: The Biden administration adopted “the Donald Trump agenda” with respect to tariffs.

Reality: The Biden-Harris administration has continued to use tariffs in strategic industries to counter unfair trade practices by China, and actually strengthened them after a mandatory 4-year review found weaknesses regarding electric vehicle supply chains and other green energy products. Unlike Trump, the Biden-Harris administration understands that, while tariffs are a strategic tool, they must be matched with real investments in domestic manufacturing, like those in the IRA, in order to protect jobs.