Vice President JD Vance speaks at the third American Dynamism Summit in Washington, D.C.
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NewsTranscript
00:00How are we doing?
00:03It's great to be here.
00:04Thanks to everybody for having me today, in particular Ben and Mark, and I just got to
00:09say hello to Ben and Catherine backstage, but I know apparently Mark has the flu right
00:14now.
00:15So Mark, wherever you are, I think I had the same flu like a few weeks ago.
00:18It sucks, but I'm sure you'll get through it.
00:21And it's great to be with you all, and it's great to talk about the importance of American
00:27dynamism and what our administration is going to do to support so many of the country's
00:32most groundbreaking and compelling companies.
00:35I know that you guys are working hard every single day, and I think it's pretty good news,
00:40right, that as of a couple of months ago, you have an administration that's working
00:43with you and facilitating your hard work instead of making it harder to innovate, which is,
00:48I think, what the last administration did, though in defense of Joe Biden, he was asleep
00:52most of the time.
00:53I don't think he totally realized what he was doing, but certainly didn't make it easier
00:57his administration did not for our innovators.
00:59Now, as some of you may have seen, and I talked about this with Ben backstage, I spoke at
01:03a conference in Paris last month where my message to a group of CEOs and foreign leaders
01:08was that we should embrace the future head on.
01:11We shouldn't be afraid of artificial intelligence, and that particularly for those of us lucky
01:16enough to be Americans, we shouldn't be fearful of productive new technologies.
01:21In fact, we should seek to dominate them, and that's certainly what this administration
01:25wants to accomplish.
01:26I suspect that most of you in this room are of like mind, and if you're not, I don't know
01:30why the hell you're at the American Dynamism Conference, but I received some pushback from
01:35people who are worried about the disruptive effects of AI.
01:40One journalist suggested the speech highlighted the tension between the, quote, techno-optimists
01:46and the populist right of President Trump's coalition.
01:50And today, I'd like to speak to these tensions as a proud member of both tribes.
01:55And let me put it simply, while this is a well-intentioned concern, I think it's based
02:00on a faulty premise, this idea that tech forward people and the populists are somehow inevitably
02:06going to come to a loggerheads is wrong.
02:09I think the reality is that in any dynamic society, technology is going to advance, of
02:14course, and speaking as a Catholic, I think back to Pope John Paul II's opening lines
02:20of the encyclical Labora Mixarens, quote, through work, man must earn his daily bread
02:30and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology, and above all, to
02:35elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives,
02:40end quote.
02:41Now, I quote the Holy Father not only because I'm a fan of his, but also because he rightly
02:45understood that in a healthy economy, technology should be something that enhances rather than
02:51supplants the value of labor, and I think there's too much fear that AI will simply
02:56replace jobs rather than augmenting so many of the things that we do.
03:00Now, in the 1970s, if you go back a little ways, many feared that the automated teller
03:06machine, what we call the ATM, would replace bank tellers.
03:09In reality, the advent of the ATM made bank tellers more productive, and you have more
03:14people today working in customer service in the financial sector than you had when
03:18the ATM was created.
03:20Now, they're doing slightly different jobs, of course.
03:23Yes, they're doing more interesting tasks also, and importantly, they're making more
03:27money than they were in the 1970s.
03:30Now, when we innovate, we do sometimes cause labor market disruptions.
03:35That happens, but the history of American innovation is that we tend to make people
03:41more productive, and then we increase their wages in the process, and I think all of us
03:45believe that's a good thing.
03:46Now, after all, who would claim that man was made less productive by the invention of the
03:51transistor or the metal lathe or the steam engine?
03:55Real innovation makes us more productive, but it also, I think, dignifies our workers.
04:00It boosts our standard of living.
04:02It strengthens our workforce and the relative value of its labor, and as Americans, all
04:08of us should be particularly proud of our extraordinary heritage.
04:11I think it is American heritage of inventing things and of our nation's status to this
04:16day as the world's foremost driver of research and development.
04:21But all of this, the role that technology plays in a labor market, and whether we greet
04:26innovative breakthroughs with excitement or with trepidation, depends on the purpose of
04:32our economic system in the first place, and I think this is where the populace have an
04:36important point.
04:37It should be no surprise that when we send so much of our industrial base to other countries,
04:42we stop making interesting new things right here at home.
04:46Look, for example, at shipbuilding.
04:48Now, if you go back to World War II, America constructed thousands of so-called liberty
04:52ships to carry troops, cargo, and other things, building them at a pace of three ships every
04:59two days, three ships every two days.
05:02Now we build about five commercial ships across an entire year in the United States
05:06of America, and as a result, the United States today accounts for 0.1 percent, one-tenth
05:13of one percent of global shipbuilding.
05:16China, on the other hand, now makes more commercial ships than the rest of the world combined.
05:21In fact, one of Beijing's state-owned firms built more commercial ships just last year
05:26than all of America has produced since the end of World War II.
05:31So while we remain the leader in technology and innovation, I think there are troubling
05:36signs on the horizon.
05:38And I raise all this to ask, does this sound like a regime, I'm speaking of China, that
05:43will pass up on the opportunity to use AI or any other technology to advance their own
05:48interests and further undermine the interests of their rivals?
05:51I think the answer is obvious, and that's why America, we've got to be tech forward.
05:55Yes, there are concerns, yes, there are risks, but we have to be leaning into the AI future
06:01with optimism and hope because I think real technological innovation is going to make
06:06our country stronger.
06:08So deindustrialization poses risks both to our national security and our workforce.
06:14It's important because it affects both.
06:17And the net result is dispossession for many in this country of any part of the productive
06:22process.
06:24And when our factories disappear and the jobs in those factories go overseas, American workers
06:30are faced not only with financial insecurity, they're also faced with a profound loss of
06:35personal and communal identity.
06:38And so to come full circle on this tension, alleged tension, between the populace and
06:44the techno-optimists, I can understand a reaction of skepticism when we talk about the revolutionary
06:49potential of new invention and artificial intelligence and all the other incredible
06:54technologies that you guys are working.
06:57But I think that that tension is a little overstated.
07:00And so I'm going to come back to what's sort of dividing some of the tech optimists and
07:07the populace on our side.
07:09I think the populace, when they look at the future and when they compare it to what's
07:13happened in the past, I think a lot of them see alienation of workers from their jobs,
07:19from their communities, from their sense of solidarity.
07:22You see the alienation of people from their sense of purpose.
07:25And importantly, they see a leadership class that believes welfare can replace a job and
07:31an application on a phone can replace a sense of purpose.
07:35I remember a Silicon Valley dinner in particular back when I was in my tech days where my wife
07:42and I were sitting around talking to some of the leaders of the important technology
07:46firms of the United States, and this was probably in 2016 or 2017.
07:52And I was talking about my real worry that we were heading in a direction where America
07:56could no longer support middle class families working on middle class wages.
08:01And importantly, that even if you had enough economic dynamism to provide the wealth to
08:07ensure those people could afford to buy a house and afford their food and so forth,
08:12that even if you replace the financial element of their jobs, you would destroy something
08:17that was dignified and purposeful about work itself.
08:20And I remember one of the tech CEOs who was there, that CEO, you would know his name if
08:24I mentioned it.
08:25He was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.
08:28He said, well, I'm actually not worried about the loss of purpose when people lose their
08:32jobs.
08:33And I said, okay, well, what do you think is going to replace that sense of purpose?
08:37And he said, digital, fully immersive gaming.
08:43And then my wife texted me underneath the table and said, we have to get the hell out
08:47of here.
08:48I said, you're driving me crazy.
08:52Now, I don't think that, of course, that CEO's views are representative of most people in
08:57this room.
08:58But when I think about a lot of the workers, based on what they've seen in the past, are
09:05very worried about the future because, frankly, their leadership has failed to serve them.
09:10And then I think about this from the perspective of a lot of the tech optimists.
09:13I think a lot of the tech optimists, they see overregulation.
09:17They see stifling innovation.
09:19I mean, you guys are builders.
09:21They are builders.
09:22And while they may sympathize with those who lost a job, they're much more frustrated that
09:27the government won't allow them to build the jobs of the future.
09:30And they know that as hard as it is to build a business in digital media, it's still harder
09:35to build one in robotics or life sciences or energy in what we call the world of atoms.
09:41They see a government that makes their lives harder, and they must trust anyone who looks
09:46to that government for aid.
09:48And what I propose is that each group, our workers, the populace on the one hand, the
09:53tech optimists on the other, have been failed by this government, not just the government
09:58of the last administration, but the government in some ways of the last 40 years.
10:03Because there were two conceits that our leadership class had when it came to globalization.
10:09The first is assuming that we can separate the making of things from the design of things.
10:14The idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain while
10:20the poor countries made the simpler things.
10:22You would open an iPhone box, and it would say designed in Cupertino, California.
10:27Now the implication, of course, is that it would be manufactured in Shenzhen or somewhere
10:32else.
10:33And yeah, some people might lose their jobs in manufacturing, but they could learn to
10:37design or to use a very popular phrase, learn to code.
10:41But I think we got it wrong.
10:42It turns out that the geographies that do the manufacturing get awfully good at the
10:47designing of things.
10:49There are network effects, as you all well understand.
10:52The firms that design products work with firms that manufacture.
10:55They share intellectual property, they share best practices, and they even sometimes share
11:00critical employees.
11:02Now we assume that other nations would always trail us in the value chain, but it turns
11:06out that as they got better at the low end of the value chain, they also started catching
11:11up on the higher end.
11:12We were squeezed from both ends.
11:14Now that was the first conceit of globalization.
11:16I think the second is that cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch, and it's a crutch
11:22that inhibits innovation.
11:23I might even say that it's a drug that too many American firms got addicted to.
11:28Now if you can make a product more cheaply, it's far too easy to do that rather than to
11:34innovate.
11:35And whether we were offshoring factories to cheap labor economies or importing cheap labor
11:40through our immigration system, cheap labor became the drug of Western economies.
11:46And I'd say that if you look in nearly every country from Canada to the UK that imported
11:50large amounts of cheap labor, you've seen productivity stagnate.
11:54And I don't think that's not a total happenstance.
11:58I think that the connection is very direct.
12:01Now one of the debates you hear on the minimum wage, for instance, is that increases in the
12:05minimum wage force firms to automate.
12:08So a higher wage at McDonald's means more kiosks, and whatever your views on the wisdom
12:12of the minimum wage, I'm not going to comment on that here.
12:16Companies innovating in the absence of cheap labor is a good thing.
12:19I think most of you are not worried about getting cheaper and cheaper labor.
12:23You're worried about innovating, about building new things, about the old formulation of technology
12:28is doing more with less.
12:30You guys are all trying to do more with less every single day.
12:34And so I'd ask my friends, both on the tech optimist side and on the populist side, not
12:39to see the failure of the logic of globalization as a failure of innovation.
12:45Indeed, I'd say that globalization's hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because
12:51it's been bad for innovation.
12:54Both our working people, our populists, and our innovators gathered here today have the
12:59same enemy, and the solution, I believe, is American innovation.
13:04Because in the long run, it's technology that increases the value of labor.
13:09Innovations like the American system and the interchangeable parts revolution it sparked,
13:13or Ford's moving assembly line that skyrocketed the productivity of our workers, that's how
13:18American industry became the envy of the world.
13:22And that's what I really want to talk about today, why innovation is key to winning the
13:26worldwide manufacturing competition, to giving our workers a fair deal, and to reclaiming
13:32our heritage via America's great industrial comeback.
13:35And I believe that's what we're on the cusp of, a great American industrial comeback.
13:40Because innovation is what increases wages.
13:44It's what protects our homelands, and I know we have a lot of defense technology companies
13:49here.
13:50It's what saves troops' lives on the battlefield.
13:52And I know everyone here today largely agrees.
13:56It's why we have some of the greatest inventors and thinkers in energy, precision machining,
14:03countless critical high-value industries just in this room.
14:07And I think the other thing that unites all of you is that you're builders.
14:10And I use that word deliberately.
14:12I was very moved by Mark's manifesto from a few years ago about America, we are a nation
14:17of builders.
14:18We make things.
14:19We create things.
14:20Each of you came to this summit not because you developed some flash-in-the-pan application,
14:26but because you're building something very real.
14:29You're raising new factories, you're turning profits back into R&D, and you're creating
14:33new good-paying jobs for your fellow Americans.
14:36And this is why I'm such huge fans of yours, of Ben's and Mark's, and of the entire endeavor.
14:42That we recognize now in our administration is the time to align our work interests with
14:48those of all of you.
14:50It's time to align the interests of our technology firms with the interests of the United States
14:55of America writ large.
14:57Now all of you, in your own ways, have answered that call.
15:01After all, there's nothing forcing anyone to be in the room today.
15:05Each one of you could have set up headquarters in Southeast Asia or China, I'm sure, and
15:09you would have done quite well for yourselves financially.
15:12But you're here, I hope, because you love your country.
15:15You love its people and the opportunities that it's given you, and you recognize that
15:19building things, our capacity to create new innovation in the economy, cannot be a race
15:25to the bottom.
15:27Now America's not going to win the future by ditching child labor laws or paying our
15:31workers less than Chinese or Vietnamese laborers.
15:34We don't want that, and it's not on the table.
15:37We can only win by doing what we always did, protecting our workers and supporting our
15:42innovators and doing both of those things at the same time.
15:46And so I want to talk a little specifics here.
15:48The Trump administration's great plan for staging the Great American Manufacturing Comeback
15:53is simple.
15:55You're making interesting new things here in America?
15:57Great.
15:58Then we're going to cut your taxes, we're going to slash regulations, we're going to
16:02reduce the cost of energy so that you can build, build, build.
16:07Our goal is to incentivize investment in our own borders, in our own businesses, our own
16:11workers, and our own innovation.
16:13We don't want people seeking cheap labor.
16:16We want them investing and building right here in the United States of America.
16:20And so if you'll allow it, I'd like to talk about a few ways that the Trump administration
16:24is already pursuing a pro-innovation economy that allows our workers to thrive and our
16:29companies to out-compete their foreign peers.
16:33In short, an economy that is vibrantly America first, that serves Americans from all walks
16:39of life and of every kind.
16:41First, President Trump is starting with, and is dead serious, about rearranging our trade
16:48and tariff regime internationally.
16:50We believe that tariffs are a necessary tool to protect our jobs and our industries from
16:56other countries, as well as the labor value of our workers in a globalized market.
17:01In fact, combined with the right technology, they allow us to bring jobs back to the United
17:06States of America and create the jobs of the future.
17:09Just look, in the past few months, at the auto industry as an important example.
17:15When you erect a tariff wall around a critical industry, like auto manufacturing, and you
17:19combine that with advanced robotics and lower energy costs and other tools that increase
17:25the productivity of U.S. labor, you give American workers a multiplying effect.
17:30Now that, in turn, allows firms to make things here at a price-competitive basis.
17:35Our president gets that, which is why, last month, we posted 9,000 new auto jobs after
17:42many, many years of stagnation or even decline in the auto sector.
17:46It's why, just weeks in, we already have new planner production announcements from Honda,
17:51from Hyundai, and Stellantis, worth billions of dollars and thousands of additional jobs
17:56on top of the ones that were already created.
17:58Now this takes work.
18:00It took, in the president's first term, the president ripping up NAFTA and creating a
18:04new U.S. deal for American manufacturers in North America.
18:10But there's important work, and we're going to do it.
18:13Now second, all of this is why the president is approaching the issue of illegal immigration
18:20as aggressively as he has, because he knows that cheap labor cannot be used as a substitute
18:26for the productivity gains that come with economic innovation.
18:29And so we've cracked down on illegal immigration at the border, where the results speak for
18:34themselves.
18:35Last month, migrant crossings were down 94% to their lowest number all time, and that
18:40happened just in two months of serious border enforcement.
18:44Thanks to President Trump's leadership, last month, for the first time in over a year,
18:49the majority of job gains went to American citizens born on U.S. soil.
18:54And that's important.
18:55For the first time in over a year, the majority of job creation actually went to American
19:00citizens.
19:02Third, this administration is focused on reducing our input costs for our manufacturers and
19:07for everybody else.
19:09Achieving energy abundance, and I know Doug Burgum was here earlier, will be here later,
19:14is top of mind, because when we look at some of the most exciting applications of new technologies,
19:19we realize it's going to take a lot of power to keep them running.
19:22And we're thrilled to have our friends from the United Arab Emirates, a number of the
19:26business leaders and government leaders, in town this week for meetings with our government.
19:32And one of the things they consistently hammer upon is something that, unfortunately, too
19:36few of our European allies tend to get, is that if you want to lead in artificial intelligence,
19:41you have got to be leading in energy production.
19:43So we are going to set the pace there, and we are going to lead from the front.
19:48Now we are already seeing, the good news is, signs of progress, even just a couple of months
19:52in.
19:53Gas and diesel prices are dropping, the cost of a barrel of U.S. crude is way down, and
19:57last Wednesday, the administration took major steps to make energy even cheaper and liberate
20:03our companies from stifling environmental regulations.
20:07Now that is great, but of course, there's a lot more work we have to do over the next
20:12four years.
20:13Getting a tax bill right is especially critical for all of you and for all of your workers.
20:18We know how important it is to restore 100% bonus depreciation for capital investments,
20:23as well as full expensing for R&D.
20:25Again, we want people to invest in America, and we are going to make sure the tax code
20:29reflects that.
20:31In order to build on the success of the original tax law, meaning the tax law from the President's
20:36first administration, our administration is working to broaden some provisions that are
20:41critical to the industrial base, like expanding full expensing to cover factory construction.
20:47For business owners, including manufacturers, making the 2017 tax cuts permanent will provide
20:53further confidence and predictability to invest in new technology and equipment, hire more
20:59American workers, and grow all of your businesses.
21:03We have a lot more to do, but the country is already starting to see the payoff of this
21:07administration's bold economic agenda.
21:11For producers and consumers alike, inflation is finally starting to come down.
21:16Labor's CPI last week dropped to its lowest number since April of 2021.
21:22And when it comes to the labor market, last month's jobs report showed a massive reversal.
21:2610,000 new manufacturing jobs created, where the previous year we had lost over 100,000
21:32manufacturing jobs.
21:34As you may have heard the President say, in less than two months since he took office,
21:39he's already secured more than $1.7 trillion in new investments across the United States.
21:45That's hundreds of thousands of new jobs in manufacturing, AI, other hard tech sectors,
21:51and more.
21:52So we think there's a lot to be excited about.
21:54There's a lot that we're excited about, and we certainly hope that you guys are excited
21:58too.
21:59But the fundamental premise, the fundamental goal of President Trump's economic policy
22:04is, I think, to undo 40 years of failed economic policy in this country.
22:10For far too long, we got addicted to cheap labor, both overseas and by importing it into
22:16our own country, and we got lazy.
22:19We over-regulated our industries instead of supporting them.
22:22We over-taxed our innovators instead of making it easier for them to build their great companies.
22:28And we made it way too hard to build things and invest things in the United States of
22:33America.
22:34That stopped two months ago, and it will continue to stop and will continue to fight for American
22:40workers and the American businesses that hire them and that support them.
22:45So I want to thank you all for two things.
22:47Number one, I want to thank you all for doing what you do.
22:49Again, you could have chosen the easy path.
22:52Every single person in this room, as the president would say, you're all very high IQ.
22:57You're some of the most talented people in the United States of America.
23:00You chose to build a business right here in the United States of America, and for that,
23:05I'm grateful.
23:06But the second thing I want to say is that I think you're not just building your own
23:09business.
23:10I think that you are part of a great American industrial renaissance.
23:14Whether it's the war of the future, the jobs of the future, the economic prosperity of
23:20the future, we believe that we must build it right here in the United States of America.
23:26So thank you all for building.
23:28Thank you all for building an America, and thank you all for building the kind of society
23:32that I want to raise my children in.
23:33God bless you all.
23:34Thanks for having me.