Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, denied in an interview with NBC News on Sunday that tariffs had caused higher costs for Americans, as economists have documented, and said he believed Trump would veto a federal abortion ban, trying to blunt two potent lines of attack from Democrats.

Vance also equivocated when asked repeatedly whether the mass deportations of migrants in the U.S. illegally, which Trump has called, for would involve separating families.

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In a lengthy exchange on tariffs, Vance denied that tariffs Trump had imposed during his first term in office had raised prices for Americans, though data shows they did, and maintained that they had brought a significant number of jobs back to the United States, though data shows they didn’t.

“When Kamala Harris says if we do the thing that Trump already did, it’s going to be way worse than it was last time, I just don’t think that makes a lot of sense,” he said, adding, “Donald Trump already did it, he brought a lot of jobs back, and it didn’t cause inflation.”

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Vance did not acknowledge a nonpartisan study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showing that Trump’s tariffs did not accomplish that goal. At one point, Vance suggested that even if consumers did end up paying more, it wouldn’t matter because the higher costs would be offset by higher wages.

NBC’s Kristen Welker also asked whether Vance could say definitively that, if elected, he and Trump would not “impose a federal ban on abortion.”

“I can absolutely commit to that,” he said.

In one of the most contentious portions of Vance’s interview, Welker asked him three times whether families would be separated under Trump’s proposed mass deportations of migrants in the country illegally — a possibility, for example, when one member of a family is in the country illegally and others are not. Vance did not give a direct answer.

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He obliquely acknowledged the possibility before claiming, without providing evidence, that the Biden-Harris administration’s policies were separating more families than a Trump-Vance administration would.

“I think that families are currently being separated, and you’re certainly going to have to deport some people in this country,” he said.

“So that’s a yes?” Welker asked.

“No,” Vance said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Maggie Astor/Doug Mills
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