Vance: Americans should 'pay a little bit more' for basic needs to fight 'woke' companies

19 September 2024

Former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) have been running on economic populism, arguing that the Republican ticket will be better for working families on a budget. But a recently unearthed video of Vance commenting on "woke" companies suggests otherwise.

Vice President Kamala Harris' official campaign X (formerly Twitter) account posted a video of Vance on Thursday, from a 2021 interview the Hillbilly Elegy author gave to far-right outlet Breitbart. In that interview, Vance said that companies distancing themselves from right-wing politics should be punished economically by consumers motivated to shop elsewhere. The eventual Ohio senator even suggested that Americans should expect to dig deeper than they'd like to in order to further conservative ideological goals.

"We are heading to a place where you have to do what woke corporations want you to do to be able to live a decent life in this country. That's not freedom, and so we have to chose," he said. "Do we want freedom, do we want and American way of life, or do we want short term satisfaction for every little thing?"

"I think we are increasingly in a situation where we are going to chose between one or the other," he added. "We're going to have to get a little uncomfortable on some of these things, or maybe you're going to have to be willing to pay a little bit more for certain consumer goods. We may even have to be willing attack some of the companies financially that are waging war on the American people."

Vance making those comments in 2021 is particularly noteworthy, as the United States was still fully in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of people had been forced out of their jobs, global supply chains had been decimated and inflation topped 7%. Not only were prices for basic necessities higher due to the pandemic, but Americans were particularly squeezed given how the pandemic affected workers' livelihoods.

Since 2021, the American economy has recovered to pre-pandemic levels of employment, real wages adjusted for inflation and gross domestic product. Earlier this year, Axios reported that the U.S. had actually experienced the best post-pandemic economic recovery of any G7 nation.

In August, inflation levels once again dipped below 3% for the first time since the pandemic hit. And the Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut interest rates by half a percentage point, marking the first "soft landing" in decades (the economic term for inflation and interest rates cooling off without a surge in unemployment).

The 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee's remarks calling for Americans to pay more for basic needs may come up during the vice presidential debate between Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on October 1. It will likely be the last debate of the 2024 cycle, as Trump has already said he wouldn't do any more debates with Harris following their face-off in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania earlier this month.

Watch the video of Vance's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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