JD Vance: Trump Willing To Fight All Out Trade War With China To Stop Fentanyl Crisis

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said during an interview over the weekend that if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wins back the White House this fall that the administration is willing to threaten an all out trade war against communist China to stop the flow on fentanyl into the United States.

Vance’s remarks, which he made during a Sunday interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” with Margaret Brennan, come as hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed in recent years from the fentanyl crisis, which has worsened under the Biden-Harris Administration.

When asked if he views China as a competitor or an adversary, Vance responded: “I think they’re both and I think that what we want to do here is build the kind of international order where we can check China. We don’t want to go to war with China, but certainly they’re an adversary.”

“For example, the Chinese know that they’re manufacturing tons of fentanyl, they’re letting come into our country,” he said. “Kamala Harris has done nothing about this. She should apply diplomatic and economic leverage over the Chinese to stop manufacturing this fentanyl, which then comes into the Mexican drug cartels, which they then ship into our country.”

Vance said that the solution to the crisis is to go to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and say: “Your entire economy is going to collapse unless you get access to American markets. You need to take this fentanyl seriously or we are going to impose serious tariffs and economic penalties for not following our laws and not helping us stem the flow of this deadly poison.”

When asked if he would be worried about blowback from doing that, Vance responded: “I think that we have a powerful economy, Margaret, with the best workers in the entire world. If we need to fight a trade war with the Chinese, we will fight it and we will win it, but we cannot do what Kamala Harris has done, which is be so terrified of using the economic power that we have that she’s not even willing to stop the flow of this deadly poison coming into our country.”

WATCH:

.@JDVance suggests that the U.S. should use economic leverage against China to stop its manufacturing of fentanyl: “You walk into Beijing, you talk to Xi Jinping, and you say, your entire economy is going to collapse unless you get access to American markets. You need to take… pic.twitter.com/fOpmyHIzO9

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 11, 2024