'Biggest Threat to US': 'China-focused' Vance In First Interview After Being Named Trump's Running Mate

In his first interview to Fox News after being named as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance branded China the “biggest threat” to the US.

If elected, Vance, like Trump, will most likely propagate the hawkish stance of their administration toward Beijing. Known to be in a group of “China-focused Republicans” as described in an article by Foreign Policy, he is “pushing for a halt to the United States’ foreign adventures” and has severely criticised the Biden administration’s foreign policy.

Trump has strong views on China, especially through the lens of trade, manufacturing and security. Vance, meanwhile, has often said the focus should be on protecting Taiwan from China rather than supplying Ukraine with more arms and ammunition to fight the Russian invasion.

In fact, he has pointedly said in past interviews that the US should make it as “costly” and “as hard as possible” for China to invade Taiwan. On Monday (July 15), during a television interview for his first remarks after being selected as the vice-president nominee, he made similar remarks when asked about the war in Ukraine.

The Ohio Senator said Trump will negotiate with Moscow and Kyiv to “bring this thing to a rapid close” so the US can focus on China. In another interview with The New York Times last month, he described his foreign policy perspective “not as Putin first” and said in a “multipolar world, we need allies to step up in big ways so that we can focus on East Asia”.

Calling China the “most significant competitor” for the next 20 to 30 years, he said when it comes to Taiwan, the US policy “effectively is one of strategic ambiguity”. “I think that we should make it as hard as possible for China to take Taiwan in the first place, and the honest answer is we’ll figure out what we do if they attack,” he told The New York Times.

He added: “The thing that we can control now is making it costly for them to invade Taiwan, and we’re not doing that because we’re sending all the damn weapons to Ukraine and not Taiwan.”

The Republican further said the US seems to have forgotten the “most important lesson of World War II: that military power is downstream of industrial power”. “We are still, right now, the world’s military superpower, largely because of our industrial might from the 1980s and 1990s. But, China is a more powerful country industrially than we are, which means they will have a more powerful military in 20 years,” he was quoted as saying by The Times.

Having had an anti-Iraq war stance in the past and a pro-Israel disposition otherwise, he said we should not be dealing with countries as being good or bad but based on “good or bad for America”.

“…That doesn’t mean you have a complete moral blind spot, but it means that you have to be honest about the countries that you’re dealing with, and there’s a complete failure to do that with most of our foreign policy establishment in this country,” he added.

India one of ‘two most important allies’

In another instance of his criticism of President Joe Biden’s remarks about immigration against India and Japan, Vance called both the countries “two most important allies” of the US.

In a post on X in May, he said: “Biden insults our two most important allies in countering China all because they don’t believe in open borders. This guy’s foreign policy is an absolute clown show.”

In his response to being under pressure to prove his toughness at the border, Biden tried to chart America’s long history of immigration. But, he did so by taking a swipe at two allies, saying Japan and India are struggling economically “because they’re xenophobic”. He alleged that the two democratic countries, along with China and Russia “don’t want immigrants”, as reported by The Times.

“Immigrants are what makes us strong,” the president was quoted as telling a crowd of supporters. “Not a joke. That’s not hyperbole, because we have an influx of workers who want to be here and want to contribute.”

The Biden administration, however, has spent years courting Japan and India to counter Chinese aggression in that region. He also hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a state visit last year.