Vice President JD Vance disclosed the specifics of an odd exchange with a multibillionaire technology CEO.
In a speech at the American Dynamism Summit, Vance described how he and his wife, Usha Vance, discussed the societal concerns of replacing workers with artificial intelligence during a dinner event they hosted in 2017 with a prominent group of Silicon Valley business leaders.
Vance recalled that one of the rich CEOs assured him that he was not concerned about job loss, claiming that ‘digital fully immersive gaming’ would give people a new sense of purpose, the Daily Mail reported.
“You would know his name if I mentioned it, he was the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company,” Vance said, without revealing the identity of the person who made the comment.
“My wife texted me under the table and said, ‘We have to get the hell out of here, these people are f-ing crazy,’” he continued.
Vance delivered strong support for President Trump’s trade policies this week, arguing that it will have a positive impact on the United States long term.
While delivering remarks at the American Dynamism Summit, the vice president excoriated the entire premise behind globalism and eliminating manufacturing jobs in America.
“But first, President Trump is starting with and is dead serious about rearranging our trade and tariff regime internationally. It must happen. We believe that tariffs are a necessary tool to protect our jobs and our industries from other countries, as well as the labor value of our workers in a globalized market. In fact, combined with the right technology, they allow us to bring jobs back to the United States of America and create the jobs of the future,” Vance declared.
“Just look in the past few months at the auto industry as an important example. When you erect a tariff wall around a critical industry like auto manufacturing, and you combine that with advanced robotics and lower energy costs and other tools that increase the productivity of you as labor, you give American workers a multiplying effect. Now that, in turn, allows firms to make things here at a price-competitive basis,” Vance added.
“Our president gets that, which is why last month we posted 9,000 new auto jobs after many many years of stagnation or even decline in the auto sector. It’s why, just weeks in, we already have new plant or production announcements from Honda, from Hyundai and Stellantis worth billions of dollars and thousands of additional jobs on top the ones that were already created,” he continued.
Vance said, “I’d ask my friends both on the tech optimist side and on the populist side not to see the failure of the logic of globalization as a failure of innovation. Indeed, I’d say that globalization’s hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it’s been bad for innovation. Both our working people, our populists, and our innovators gathered here today have the same enemy, and the solution, I believe, is American innovation, because in the long run it’s technology that increases the value of labor.”
“Innovations like the American system and the interchangeable parts revolution it sparked or Ford’s moving assembly line that skyrocketed the productivity of our workers — that’s how American industry became the envy of the world. And that’s what I really want to talk about today, why innovation is key to winning the worldwide manufacturing competition, to giving our workers a fair deal and to reclaiming our heritage via America’s great industrial come back, and I believe that’s what we’re on the cusp of, a great American industrial come back,” he concluded.
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Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled House voted to block Congress from quickly challenging tariffs imposed by Trump.
The 216-214 vote, largely along party lines, delays lawmakers’ ability to force a vote to revoke Trump’s tariffs and immigration actions for the rest of the year.
Since taking office, Trump has announced a series of tariffs that have strained relations with major trading partners such as Mexico and China, and this week he escalated a trade war with Canada—moves that have rattled markets and prompted business leaders to warn of weakening consumer demand.
Trump has stated that the tariffs are intended to address unbalanced trade relations, repatriate jobs, and stem the flow of illegal narcotics from abroad, Reuters noted.
The vote effectively halted an effort to challenge his tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico.
“Every House Republican who voted for this measure is voting to give Trump expanded powers to raise taxes on American households through tariffs with full knowledge of how he is using those powers, and every Republican will own the economic consequences of that vote,” DelBene and fellow Democrat, Rep. Don Beyer from Virginia, claimed in a statement.
“This is an appropriate balance of powers and we trust this White House to do the right thing, and I think that was the right vote and it was reflected in the vote count,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said when asked by Reuters why he was okay with ceding more power to the Executive Branch regarding trade.