Read the full transcript of Fox News’ Lawrence Jones in conversation with the Vice President JD Vance on ‘Fox & Friends’ on Trump administration’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, April 3, 2025.
The Interview Begins
LAWRENCE JONES: All right, thanks, family. Let’s bring in the vice president and Vice President, JD Vance. Thanks so much for joining FOX and Friends this morning.
JD VANCE: Good morning. Great to be with you.
LAWRENCE JONES: So the last time we had a one on one was in your house. You weren’t vice president. You were auditioning. You were the only candidate that said if you didn’t get selected, you would be disappointed. Well, you got accepted. So congratulations, Mr. Vice President.
JD VANCE: Thank you.
Trump’s Tariff Policy
LAWRENCE JONES: Let’s talk about some of the issues that matter to the American people. The president’s new tariff policy. And when I think about what he got elected on is bring the cost down for people but also bring manufacturing back to the country.
JD VANCE: That’s right.
LAWRENCE JONES: These are going to kind of hit each other. Right. Explain to us how you get manufacturing here but also get the cost down for the American people.
JD VANCE: Well, if you go back a little bit, Lawrence, remember during the first Trump administration, everybody said that Trump’s tariffs were going to be inflationary. Back then, what actually happened, we had 1.5% inflation. We had the fastest growing economy in a generation, and we had the beginning of a manufacturing renaissance in the United States of America.
Then, of course, we had four terrible years of the Biden administration. But I think it’s useful for all of us to step back and ask ourselves, what has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America? And the answer is, fundamentally, it’s based on two principles. Incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make for us. And to make it a little bit more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.
That is not a recipe for economic prosperity. It’s not a recipe for low prices, and it’s not a recipe for good jobs in the United States of America. For 40 years, we have gone down that pathway. We’ve seen closing factories. We’ve seen rising inflation. We’ve seen the cost of housing so high that most Americans can’t afford to buy a home.
Right now, President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction. He ran on that. He promised it, and now he’s delivering. And, yes, this is a big change. I’m not going to shy away from it. But we needed a big change, Lawrence. We cannot keep going down the Joe Biden globalist pathway where we have $2 trillion of peacetime debt and deficits. We have manufacturing disappearing. That is not working for Americans. We’ve got to take this country in a different direction.
Market Reaction vs. Worker Support
LAWRENCE JONES: So Mr. Vice President, there does seem to be a disconnect. You see Wall Street in the media and the markets and they’re freaking out right now. But then I look at those workers that were in the Rose Garden yesterday and they’re celebrating. I think about all the diners that I’ve done across the country and all these businesses saying we’ve lost manufacturing here and they’re celebrating the move. What is the disconnect between the market and the people, those workers that are cheering this on right now?
JD VANCE: Well, I think on one hand, frankly a lot of people have gotten rich from American jobs moving overseas, but American workers have not gotten rich. And frankly, American companies have not gotten wealthy from the increasing growth of foreign competitors manufacturing overseas.
As the President says, Lawrence, these foreign companies, they charge us ridiculous tariffs. They engage in a lot of non-tariff practices like currency manipulation. That has been awful for Main Street in the United States of America. It’s meant those diners, their customers don’t have jobs anymore. It meant those great steel mills, those great auto plants have closed down and their workers have been laid off.
What I saw yesterday in the Rose Garden was incredible enthusiasm because a lot of those workers, they’ve been working hard for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, young and old, were in the Rose Garden yesterday. They’ve never had a president who stood up for their jobs and stood up for American prosperity. They finally see something has shifted. There were Democrats out there, Republicans, there were union and non-union workers alike. They know this is a big change. But we need a big change in this country because what we’ve done, what we did under the Biden administration, it just wasn’t working.
Impact on Everyday Americans
LAWRENCE JONES: So Mr. Vice President, I know a lot of MAGA folks, a lot of Americans that are cheering the President on, especially when he takes it to other countries. They feel like we’ve been screwed for a long time. But I also know people that come from our background, they’re living paycheck to paycheck, of course, and they want to do the patriotic duty of taking it to these other countries. But it’s going to hit them a little bit. What can you tell the American people that they just can’t afford an extra $3 here and there about the government making up the difference from that. Will costs go up at some point? Will this just be temporary? Are we talking three months or six months?
JD VANCE: Well, we certainly hear and I appreciate, you know, how I grew up. I know I grew up in a family that often did live paycheck to paycheck. And we know a lot of Americans are worried. So we are fighting very hard to bring prices down. We’re going to have the biggest deregulation in the history of this country. We’re doing a lot of things and already have done a lot of things to lower costs.
You heard the president mention this yesterday.
Eggs when we came in were at a 10-year high and all of a sudden they’ve dropped 60% just in the two months of the Trump administration.
What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we are not going to fix things overnight. Joe Biden left us—this is not an exaggeration, Lawrence—with the largest peacetime debt and deficit in the history of the United States of America with sky high interest rates. You don’t fix that stuff overnight. We know people are struggling. We’re fighting as quickly as we can to fix what was left to us, but it’s not going to happen immediately.
But we really do believe that if we pursue the right deregulation, we pursue those energy cost reducing policies, yes, people are going to see it in their pocketbook. They’re also going to benefit from the fact that foreign countries can’t take advantage of us anymore. That means their jobs are going to be more secure.
Tariffs and Tax Cuts
LAWRENCE JONES: I don’t think you can talk about this, the tariffs and not talk about the tax cuts as well that we’re expecting. Is this to offset some of the cuts that we plan on expecting? Will this be a permanent measure or are we thinking when it comes to the scoring of this bill, we’re going to be able to get cuts as a result of this?
JD VANCE: I wouldn’t think of tax cuts as a way to offset the tariffs. Here’s the way that I think about it: for 40 years we’ve had an economy that rewards people who ship American jobs overseas and raises taxes on American workers. And we’re flipping that on its head.
We’re going to cut taxes for American workers and for American companies that build here. We’re going to make it harder to ship American jobs overseas. It’s a total shift in the way that we’ve done economic policy in the United States of America. But it was necessary.
So, yeah, we’re going to cut your taxes. You’re going to have more money in your pocket and that’s of course going to help you deal with the cost of inflation. But that’s not about offsetting the tariffs. They work together. We want to penalize people for shipping our jobs overseas. We want to reward hardworking Americans. It’s all part of the same policy.
Elon Musk and DOGE
LAWRENCE JONES: I want to get to some other news because there were some reports that came out that Elon Musk is leaving. Now, of course, the President had already said he was only going to be here for a temporary basis. Tell us about that. DOGE will continue after Elon Musk. Will he still be an advisor to you and the President? I know you all have a great relationship. Tell us about it.
JD VANCE: Well, first of all, that report I saw was total fake news. Elon came in and we said, we need you to make government more efficient. We need you to shrink the incredible vast bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people, but also costs way too much money. And we said that’s going to take about six months. And that’s what Elon signed up for. But of course he’s going to continue to be an advisor.
And by the way, the work of DOGE is not even close to done. The work of Elon is not even close to done. You look at all of the fraudulent grants that they found. You look at people who are 150 years old who are fraudulently collecting Social Security payments. You see our Social Security system, 40% of the people who are calling in are actually committing fraud. That means the 60% who need their Social Security checks are waiting in line.
DOGE has got a lot of work to do. And yeah, that work’s going to continue after Elon leaves. But fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an advisor of both me and the President. And he’s done a lot of good things. People don’t realize how vast and uncontrolled the bureaucracy was. We’ve started to chip away at it, but there’s a lot of work to do. It’s not going to happen all in six months. It’s going to take a long and committed effort.
TikTok Developments
LAWRENCE JONES: Tell us about the news when it comes to TikTok. It looks like the President is going to announce maybe today some proposal, maybe America owns 50% of TikTok. A private investor will own the other part. Is that going to happen today?
JD VANCE: So I don’t want to get ahead of any presidential announcements here, but what I’ve said is we’ve been working very hard, me and the President, the entire team, to really accomplish two things. First of all, you want to make sure that the TikTok app in the United States is not spying on people. It’s good for national security. You also want to give people access to this incredible platform, which, as we know, that’s where a lot of young people get their news. That’s where a lot of young people found out about the policies of the Trump administration. And we got to accomplish both of those things. I think that we’re in a good place. We’re going to keep on working at it. But I’ll let the president make that announcement.
LAWRENCE JONES: If it doesn’t come out before the deadline, because I know the president extended it…
JD VANCE: It’ll come out before the deadline. We had a couple days to continue working on it, to finalize some things. And of course, we’re going to let the president announce whatever we ultimately decide.
Immigration Enforcement Challenges
LAWRENCE JONES: Let’s talk about some of the lawfare in this country because I think it’s important. Of course, we’re seeing judges block illegal immigrants that came into the country illegally. That was the first crime. And then the second crime, they victimized American citizens, murder, rapists and all that. What’s going to be done about this? We’re seeing these one-off stories of, you know, this person was a great father. And then they’re hanging around with MS-13. So what’s going to be done? The courts are blocking this right now. The executive branch. What are you guys going to do about it?
JD VANCE: Well, look, we’re going to keep on appealing. We’re going to keep on fighting back here. First of all, we have to remember the most important thing was to stop the bleeding, to stop the influx of massive illegal immigration into the country. And in two months, the president has already done that. You have illegal border crossings down over 95% in pretty much every part of the American southern border.
Then, yeah, we got to get the violent criminals out of here. We’ve got to get illegal immigrants who came in during the Biden administration out of our country. That’s what we’re working on now. You’re right. The courts, some radical left judges have stepped in and said, you’re not allowed to deport MS-13 gang members. That’s crazy. We think the Supreme Court’s going to overrule it and we’re going to keep on fighting for the president’s prerogative to enforce the law.
You have to remember the number of people who came in here, the innocent Americans like Jocelyn Nungray who lost their lives. Democrats never wept for them. Democrats never issued a congressional resolution of condemnation for their murder. Democrats didn’t do anything to make it harder for violent thugs to come into our country and prey on innocent young women.
What they’re getting fired up about, what they’re most angry about, is not that Jocelyn Nungre was murdered, but that the person who murdered her is getting shipped back home where they belong, not in the United States of America. I think it shows a disgraceful set of priorities from congressional Democrats. We’re not going to let that stand in our way. We’re going to keep on doing the American people’s work.
Vice President JD Vance Discusses Deportation Cases and Administration Priorities
LAWRENCE JONES: Mr. Vice President, can I get you to put your lawyer hat on for a second? Because they’re pointing to one of these cases of a gentleman that they said should not have been deported from El Salvador. They said he was not connected to MS-13. What would you tell them about that case? Because they’re saying that this is a person that was a great member of society. You’ve looked at the court records, you’ve talked to the men and women on the ground. What can you tell us about that situation?
JD VANCE: Well, there have been a few cases out there where the Democrats and the media say, “Oh, this person was just an innocent father of three.” And then you find out, for example, I think this is the case that you’re talking about. Back in 2019, an immigration judge looked at all the evidence, looked at all the data and concluded that this allegedly innocent person that we sent to El Salvador was actually a member of an MS-13 gang. He had also committed some traffic violations. He had not shown up for some court dates. This is not exactly father of the year here. This is a person that we don’t think should be in our country.
Here’s the most important point though, Lawrence, is whatever the argument is, whatever the justification, no one doubts, not even the crazy left wing media criticized the idea that we could deport this person. They just took issue with the reasoning for why we deported this person. This was unquestionably an illegal alien. This was unquestionably a person who broke the laws to get into our country. This is unquestionably a person an immigration judge had found had zero right to be in the United States of America.
We do not ask permission from far left Democrats before we deport illegal immigrants. We do the American people’s business. And again, for the American people who are watching, this is such a weird, mistaken placement of priorities. We need to make our country stronger. We need to create jobs. We need to make our streets safer. What is it about congressional Democrats that get more angry at deporting violent gang members than they do at the victims of those violent gang members? I don’t even understand where they’re coming from. They’ve gone off the deep end and they got to come back to reality.
Legal Challenges to Administration Policies
LAWRENCE JONES: I think it goes to the larger point though, about the lawfare happening right now. It’s not just the immigration cases, but pretty much everything that the executive is doing right now has been challenged in these lower courts.
JD VANCE: Sure.
LAWRENCE JONES: Is there a way to expedite this straight to the Supreme Court, or do we legally have to let lower courts, you know, make these decisions? It goes to the appeal courts and finally it goes to the Supreme Court. People are saying the four years will be up by this.
JD VANCE: Well, there are a lot of things that we can do, not just appeals. We can limit the jurisdiction of certain courts. Even when certain courts make a ruling, say that you’re not allowed to deport a person for a certain reason, we can still deport that person for another reason. So it’s not like deportations have stopped. But yes, the radical courts are a problem.
But our view here is we knew we were going to have this fight. We were prepared for it. We’re going to litigate it all the way to the Supreme Court. We think that we’re going to win. And when we do win, that will end this question permanently.
Think about this. The Democrats, they’re spending so many resources fighting the deportation of gang members. You have to ask, where are their priorities? But we knew they were going to do this. We’re prepared for it, Lawrence, and we’re going to fight all the way to the top of the courts.
Reflecting on the Administration’s First 100 Days
LAWRENCE JONES: Mr. Vice President, I think about your life story very similar to mine as well. Growing up with nothing and now you’re the Vice President of the United States.
JD VANCE: It’s a great country, man.
LAWRENCE JONES: It is a great country. We’re almost at the hundred day mark.
JD VANCE: Yep.
LAWRENCE JONES: We know the President has been strong on the border. We’ve seen almost operational control of the border at this point. We’ve seen the waste, fraud and abuse being brought to light. How do you think, how would you rate this first hundred days, man?
JD VANCE: I think the president has done more in 100 days than almost any administration has done in eight years. And I really think that when you consider the southern border, which was the biggest crisis that we got elected to solve, two months in border crossings are almost at zero when it comes to illegal border crossings.
When I think just about where I grew up, the factory closures, the fact that, you know, friends of mine were getting their parents laid off, I talked to a lot of people who couldn’t afford a home on the Campaign trail. I talked to women who were worried about the price of a dozen eggs. We’re making steady progress on all those issues.
Yes, it doesn’t happen overnight, but when you look at the hundreds of billions of dollars in new investment coming into our country, auto plants that were planned to close that are now adding shifts as opposed to closing, egg prices that are way down, gasoline prices that are way down. We’re making a lot of progress, but there’s still a lot left to do. And I know the president is laser focused on it. So am I.
Looking to the Future
LAWRENCE JONES: You have become almost the fighter in chief. The president sends out a message and he puts it in bullet points for the American people. And then you go on to Sunday shows and you duke it out with them. Sometimes you have to duke it out with world leaders in the Oval Office as well. And there’s a lot of people saying about the mantle of MAGA. What happens after these four years? I guess this is my final question to you. Do you run for president after this? Do you? I know you want to. You’re going to tell me you’re going to focus on being vice president right now. But people are wondering if we can accomplish all of this in four years, and they want some security in that. Is JD the man to continue the MAGA agenda?
JD VANCE: Well, look, man, I really am just not focused on politics. I’m not focused on the midterm elections in 2026, much less the presidential election in 2028. When we get to that point, I’ll talk to the President. We’ll figure out what we want to do.
But the way that I think about it is if we do a good job, the politics take care of themselves. I just want America to be wealthy again. I want our communities to be safe again. I want us to be opening factories rather than closing down factories. I want people of my generation to be able to afford a home, to raise a family in. And I want to stop all the ridiculous wars that were started by the previous administrations.
There’s so much to do, man, and I don’t really think that much about what happens in three and a half years. If I do a good job, if the President does a good job for the American people, and I know that we will, the politics will take care of itself. Let’s just do a good job.
LAWRENCE JONES: Well, when you do decide, you got to make me a promise. And it’s going to be on Fox and Friends. It has to be. Mr. Vice President, thank you. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.
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