In remarks to Vantage Plastics in Bay City, Michigan, Vice President JD Vance spoke about the state of manufacturing in the U.S. and President Trump's plans to increase it.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Now, y'all don't hold it against me, of course, you know that I'm from that state, just one
00:10state south, but we know in the industrial Midwest that companies like Vantage give Great
00:19Lakes states the reputation that we know it is the powerhouse of American industry and
00:24that makes it the powerhouse of world industry.
00:27I'm grateful for the good-paying jobs this company brings to the area and for the incredible
00:33job this business does generating economic opportunity in this region of our country.
00:40And I really do believe that America's success depends on the success of companies like Vantage
00:46Plastics.
00:47Now, I don't mean that in some abstract, poetic-sounding sense, I mean it literally.
00:52If we do not protect our nation's manufacturers, we lose a fundamental part of who we are
00:58as a people.
01:00Making things, building things, working with our hands is America's heritage and that heritage
01:06is alive and well in this facility.
01:11Now, our frontier spirit would have done us little good in conquering the continent if
01:21we couldn't manufacture the railway track, the steamboats, the dynamite, and everything
01:26else needed to do so.
01:29American industry, American workers famously won the Second World War.
01:34American industry took us to the moon and enabled the Silicon Revolution that created
01:38the most precise and sophisticated jobs imaginable in any field, demanding mechanical expertise
01:46on the scale of nanometers, which is so small you can't even see it.
01:51But over the years, I hate to say it, we have squandered that heritage in the United
01:55States of America.
01:56Not in Vantage Plastics, thank God, but all across our country.
02:00Between the 1990s and the election of Donald Trump the first time back in 2016, this country
02:06lost 5 million good manufacturing jobs.
02:11And we saw over 90,000 American factories, great American factories, shut their doors.
02:18And as I know I don't have to tell anyone here today, when we lose the ability to make
02:22our own stuff, we abandon a way of life, one that has sustained towns like Bay Cities and
02:28countless other communities from Middletown, Ohio to a ton of communities all across the
02:33Midwest.
02:34Being able to make things is good because it creates self-sufficiency as a nation and
02:39it creates self-sufficiency in our people.
02:42And more importantly, manufacturing jobs are good for our workers.
02:46We know this.
02:47You all know this.
02:48They pay a premium of 10% compared to wages in other fields and other roles.
02:53They often come with the good benefits and the good job creation that drives the kind
03:00of economic opportunity that we want to see in our country.
03:03When we de-industrialize, when we lose those good jobs that allow us to support families,
03:09those are the kinds of things that we lose.
03:12And I think that we need a president, and thank God we have a president, that thinks
03:16we're going to bring it back, and we are.
03:26So I've got, you know, I've got some bad news and I've got some good news.
03:29Do we want to hear the bad news first or the good news first?
03:32Okay, that's good.
03:35You all said bad news, and that's good because if you had said good news, that would have
03:38totally screwed up the flow of this speech.
03:41I got to start with the bad news a little bit, then we talk about the good news.
03:45But here's the simple truth.
03:47The very simple truth is that, unfortunately, the last administration left us with a terrible
03:54economy.
03:55They left us with sky-high prices.
03:58They left us with home values that had doubled in just four short years, meaning a lot of
04:03American families couldn't afford to buy or to rent a home.
04:08They left us with a historic debt crisis.
04:10Did you know that in the history of the United States of America, we have never had deficits
04:16and debt so high as we had under Joe Biden's leadership?
04:20And what did all that peacetime debt and deficit, what did all that spending, what did all that
04:27waste and fraud get us?
04:29It got us an economy where Americans couldn't afford to buy a home, our families couldn't
04:33afford to buy groceries, and our people felt like the American dream was slipping away.
04:39Now that is the bad news, but now we can talk a little bit about the good news, because
04:44I'm proud to say that thanks to all of you, on January 20th, 2025, we started a great
04:51American comeback.
05:02Last November, America reelected a president with a simple goal, to power our nation's
05:08industrial comeback, and once again, make the U.S. the world's manufacturing superpower,
05:14and that is exactly what President Trump has sought out to do.
05:18Now I have to be honest with you, the road ahead of us is long, but we are already, in
05:22just seven short weeks, starting to see early indications of the president's vision becoming
05:29our shared American reality.
05:32This February, the president's first full month in office, America gained 10,000 American
05:38manufacturing jobs.
05:39Now compare that to last year, when under the Biden administration, we were losing an
05:43average of about 10,000 manufacturing jobs per month.
05:48That's over 100,000 jobs and manufacturing lost in a single year under Joe Biden, and
05:55we've got to ask ourselves, what has driven the turnaround?
05:59Well, first of all, President Trump has been clear about his plan, about our administration's
06:05plan, our goal is to make it easier and more affordable to make things again in the United
06:11States of America.
06:12If you invest in America, in American jobs, in American workers, and in American businesses,
06:18you're going to be rewarded.
06:20We're going to cut your taxes, we're going to slash regulations, and we're going to reduce
06:24the cost of energy to build things right here in this country that all of us love.
06:29But if you try to undercut us and build outside of our borders, the President Trump's administration
06:36has got nothing for you.
06:38If you want to be rewarded, build in America.
06:41If you want to be penalized, build outside of America.
06:44It's as simple as that.
06:45So, if you've gotten rich the last few decades by ripping off U.S. companies and preying
07:02on American workers, well, the President is simply telling you the jig is up.
07:06If you want to manufacture in China, which has the worst and most punitive economic policies
07:12towards us anywhere in the world, then you are going to have to pay the consequences.