Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, addressed the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night in a primetime address following his selection as former President Trump's running mate and used the occasion to criticize President Biden's support for trade deals and their impact on towns like the one he grew up in.
"I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands and love their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts," the vice presidential nominee said. "But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America's ruling class in Washington."
"When I was in fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico," Vance said.
"When I was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class manufacturing jobs," he added.
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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was approved by Congress with bipartisan support in 1993.
Former President Trump campaigned on renegotiating NAFTA and the U.S., Canada and Mexico began talks about revising the trade deal in 2017.
That process ultimately resulted in the three countries agreeing on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2019 – a trade deal that largely updated and revised NAFTA while incorporating new oversight and dispute resolution mechanisms.
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Vance's remarks about the trade deal with China are a reference to the U.S. voting to grant most favored nation status in 2000, which was a prerequisite for China joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) the following year.
WTO rules require that member nations grant unconditional most favored nation (MFN) status to all members of the global trade group.
In effect, that means the U.S. is obligated to provide the same treatment to all WTO members when applying tariffs – which are taxes on imports – on a given product unless an exception is claimed. China's MFN status has been criticized as contributing to the trend of some U.S. manufacturing capacity being moved offshore.
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The vice presidential nominee also offered an overview of potential Trump-Vance administration goals in terms of trade and U.S. industrial development.
"We're done importing foreign labor. We're going to fight for American citizens and their good wages," Vance said. "We're done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade, and we're going to stamp more and more products with that beautiful label, 'Made in the USA.'"
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"We're going to build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families made with the hands of American workers. Together, we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens," Vance added.
