President Donald Trump’s policies will deliver higher wages to American voters, Sen. JD Vance promised repeatedly during the vice presidential debate.
“Donald Trump delivered for the American people rising wages, rising take-home pay, an economy that works for normal Americans, a secure southern border, a lot of things, frankly, that I didn’t think he’d be able to deliver on,” said Vance who opposed Trump before the 2016 election.
When “Donald Trump was president, inflation was low, take-home pay was higher, and he saved the very [healthcare] program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership,” Vance said.
Overall, populist-minded Vance mentioned wages and pay more than ten times during the debate. That is a remarkable change from many prior campaign debates in which establishment Democrats and Republicans have refused to offer higher pay to citizens in exchange for their votes.
In contrast, the Democratic candidate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), promised more federal aid to be delivered via government agencies, tax payments, and non-profit groups. For example, Walz touted the Democrats’ plans for child care by saying, “Once that child is born, like in Minnesota, they get [government] meals, they get [government] early-childhood education, they get [government-funded] health care.”
But Vance promised that Trump’s trade policy would raise Americans’ pay for whatever purposes they prefer: “Think about this, if you’re trying to employ slave laborers in China at $3 a day, you’re going to do that and undercut the wages of American workers — unless our country stands up for itself and says you’re not accessing our markets unless you’re paying middle-class Americans a fair wage.”
Immigration enforcement, Vance added, “will be really good for our workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day’s work.”
Trump’s tax cuts will raise wages, he said, “Tim admirably admits that they want to undo the Trump tax cuts, but if you look at what was so different about Donald Trump’s tax cuts, even from previous Republican tax cut plans, is that a lot of those resources went to giving more take-home pay to the middle-class and working-class Americans.”
“Donald Trump’s economic policies [delivered] the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country, 1.5 percent inflation, and to boot, peace and security all over the world,” Vance said.
Trump’s policies will also reduce housing costs for Americans, said Vance: “Look in Springfield, Ohio, and communities all across this country — you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”
Vance did not specifically mention salaries for white-collar Americans, even though those salaries are also losing value because of migration, housing, taxes, and trade policy. But any media-magnified debate about wages is likely to expand into the question of stalled salaries for American college graduates.
