President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he had chosen Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, sparking widespread interest in what the senator’s policy positions will be and what he will bring to the campaign.
Vance, a congressman best known as a best-selling author who was elected to Congress in late 2022, has spoken widely about how the U.S. government should handle international affairs, crafting a worldview that prioritizes American interests in foreign policy decision-making.
Below is a selection of Vance’s commentary on the world’s most pressing conflicts and how the United States should engage with its allies and neighbors.
Ukraine
Though he wasn’t yet a senator when Russian strongman Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vance has consistently questioned what Washington’s involvement in Ukraine serves U.S. interests and urged the country’s European allies to do more to help Kyiv confront the threat. Vance has also called the Ukraine war a “distraction” from President Joe Biden’s administration’s larger domestic problems and from Communist China, which he considers the United States’ biggest geopolitical threat.
Our country is in a historic crisis, and our leaders can only talk about Russia and Ukraine. Perhaps they know that a distraction would benefit them. https://t.co/cn3HUPWu6Y
— JD Vance (@JDVance1) March 15, 2022
Vance before the election Had made “Honestly, I don’t care what happens in Ukraine. … I’m tired of Joe Biden focusing on the borders of countries I don’t care about while turning my own border into an all-out war zone,” she said in a statement that made headlines.
He has since toughened his stance, calling on Americans to “focus on our problems first.” tell NBC News in March 2022 said the emphasis on domestic issues was “not inconsistent with supporting Ukrainians.”
in article In a November 2023 report co-authored with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, Vance intensified his opposition to Russian aggression but suggested that “Europe take the lead in supporting that war.” The authors compared the situation in Ukraine to that of Israel, noting that “while Israel has wealthy neighbors, they are not going to support Israel’s war effort, and aid is unlikely to come from anywhere other than the United States.”
“The same cannot be said about Ukraine, whose wealthy EU neighbours, especially Germany and France, should be able to provide significant support,” the article stressed.
Vance also argues that Ukraine is not as important to American interests as Biden makes it out to be.
“It’s not that I don’t admire the courage of the Ukrainians. Of course I do. The problem is that the U.S. is stretched thin,” he said. Said “The United States does not have the industrial capacity to support a war in Ukraine, a war with Israel, or a possible war in East Asia if China invades Taiwan,” he said in April. “So the United States is forced to make a choice.”
More recently, in June, he expressed concern to Breitbart News about the possibility of NATO invading Ukraine and going to war with Russia.
“They’re saying we need to send NATO ground troops to Ukraine. This is insanity,” he said. “There is no compelling American interest that justifies NATO’s direct involvement in this conflict.”
“We need someone to say, ‘Enough with the madness. Enough with the bullshit. We’re not going to send in NATO troops unless there’s a direct threat to NATO. So this war is not a good thing, but it’s not a direct threat to NATO,'” he concluded.
China
Vance has made addressing China’s intellectual property theft, manufacturing dominance and geopolitical threats a top priority during his tenure as a senator, and on Monday, he spoke about China on Fox News in his first media appearance since his nomination was announced. Said Host Sean Hannity said he wanted the Ukraine war to “end quickly so America can focus on the real problem, which is China.”
“That is the biggest threat to our country and we are totally distracted by it,” he argued.
As a senator, Vance has proposed legislation to directly counter China’s threats to American prosperity, including introducing legislation in March that would limit the Chinese government’s access to American capital markets.
“If the Chinese Communist Party is unwilling to play by America’s rules, they should not be allowed access to our financial markets,” he told Breitbart News at the time. “Ohio’s workers and manufacturers have suffered the consequences of the Chinese Communist Party’s illegal currency manipulation for too long. It’s time to hold them accountable and make them follow the law.”
Vance also called on US cybersecurity officials to do more to combat state-sponsored Chinese hacking.
The vice presidential candidate also sees a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan as a significant threat to the United States, and contrasts that possibility with the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
“This is a very important thing for Americans to understand: The Taiwanese dominate America’s information technology industry because we allow them to make computer chips,” he said. Said During an April 2023 appearance on Fox News, he said: “If Taiwan surrenders to China, this country will fall into a major depression. We must prevent that. But to prevent that, we must be self-sufficient and make our own weapons.”
Vance argues that expanding domestic manufacturing is central to confronting the threat from China and addressing the Chinese Communist Party’s widespread human rights abuses.
“One of the big mistakes we’ve made as a country, as a bipartisan effort, is we let China make too many of our products,” Vance told Breitbart News in June. “We let Mexico make too many of our products. If you look at a lot of different angles of what Biden’s done on green energy, they’ve doubled down on very stupid policies. Because where are the minerals that are needed for a green energy economy mined? They’re mined in China. Where are a lot of the components made? In China.”
Similarly, interview CBS News Confronting the state In May, Vance voiced his support for tariffs on China, saying, “When you impose tariffs, it’s the same as saying we’re going to punish China for using slave labor to import products into the United States.”
“I agree that we need to put broad tariffs on products coming from China, not just solar panels and electric cars,” he continued. “We need to protect American industry from all competition, because, Margaret, the reason China is beating the U.S. is not because their workers are better, it’s because they’re willing to use slave labor.”
Israel/Middle East
Vance is a vocal supporter of the US-Israel alliance and has criticised Biden’s policies following the Oct. 7 Hamas siege of Israel.
“Our goal in the Middle East is for Israel to have good relations with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab countries,” he told CNN in May. “There’s no way we can do that unless Israel finishes its business with Hamas. If Israel can’t even do that, the Middle East will take the attitude that they can’t be trusted.”
“You can never defeat Hamas’ ideology, but you can eliminate its commanders, its last military-trained battalions, and I think Israel should be given the authority to do that,” he suggested.
As with the China issue, Vance said he would not focus solely on Ukraine. Weakened America’s ability to supply weapons to Israel.
“In January, the United States raided one of Israel’s major weapons stockpiles designed to support its allies in the region, transferring 300,000 155mm artillery rounds to the Ukraine war instead,” Vance wrote in Heritage. article“It has become abundantly clear that the United States has poured excessive resources and attention into Ukraine at the expense of its allies, including Israel and Taiwan.”
Vance has rejected calls to reduce Israel’s importance in American foreign policy.
“A big part of the reason Americans care about Israel is because we remain the largest Christian-majority country in the world,” Vance said. Said “The idea that there is an American foreign policy that doesn’t really care about that corner of the world is absurd,” he said at the May event.
latin america
Most of Senator Vance’s public comments about Latin America have been about the problem of fentanyl flowing into American communities from Mexico. He supports using the U.S. military to fight drug cartels and has suggested the Mexican government is not the best partner in fighting organized drug trafficking.
“We know about the fentanyl problem, and it has turned the Mexican drug cartels into the largest terrorist and criminal organizations in the world. What are they doing? They’re profiting off the deaths of people in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,” he told Breitbart News in June. “This is a very big problem.”
Vance told NBC News in July 2023 that fighting drug cartels is an effective military action for the United States.
“I want to empower the president of the United States, whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican, to use the power of the United States military to go after these drug cartels,” he said. Said“The Mexican government needs to recognize that the constant influx of fentanyl is destabilizing them in many ways.”
Vance has made limited comments about the region’s three communist regimes – Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – but when he was a Senate candidate in July 2021, he came out as a staunch supporter of anti-communist protesters in Cuba.
“It’s great to see the Cuban people actually going out and protesting for freedom and against the oppression and deprivation of the communist government,” he told radio host Sebastian Gorka. “So I wish them the best and I’m very excited.”
Vance I got it. “If you want support from the Biden administration or the Biden administration, you’re more likely to get it if you wave a rainbow flag or a BLM flag, because unfortunately, our government doesn’t see their flag as a symbol of freedom as Cubans do,” one protester said, waving an American flag.
WATCH: J.D. Vance says he’d ‘certainly’ be interested in being Trump’s VP nominee
Matt Purdy/Breitbart News
