In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, former Vice President Mike Pence urged President Trump to reverse course on his economic policies.

In his op-ed, Pence wrote, ” Economic warning signs are flashing. The first quarter of 2025 marked the second-worst economic start for a presidential administration since Richard Nixon.”

He added, “The cause? A massive policy misstep in the form of sweeping tariffs imposed on friend and foe alike. Since the president announced his ‘liberation day’ tariffs, the only thing America has been liberated from is trillions of dollars in investments.”

This isn’t the first time Pence has criticized President Trump since leaving the White House in 2020.

During his failed Presidential run, Pence threw numerous jabs at President Trump’s leadership abilities before he dropped out of the race due to poor polling.

What the 47th President Can Learn From the 45th: Time-Honored Conservative Principles Guided the First Trump Administration. America needs them now. @Mike_Pence, WSJ https://t.co/o7MCrYnULF pic.twitter.com/he21PKSXdp

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) May 2, 2025

Per The Times:

Mike Pence has written words of advice to his former boss President Trump, urging him to return to traditional conservative values, abandon trade tariffs and support Ukraine in its war with Russia or risk jeopardising America’s future.

Pence, who was Trump’s vice-president between 2017 and 2021, lauded his return to the White House as “a political comeback unrivalled in modern American history” but said a number of his policy decisions were a departure from what had made the US prosperous during his first term.

He wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he welcomed Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration and cheered anticipated rises in military spending, which are expected to take the Pentagon’s budget over $1 trillion for the first time.

“Our country has corrected course in many ways, but the results are undeniably mixed,” Pence said, adding that the “economic warning signs are flashing. The first quarter of 2025 marked the second-worst economic start for a presidential administration since Richard Nixon.

“The cause? A massive policy misstep in the form of sweeping tariffs imposed on friend and foe alike. Since the president announced his ‘liberation day’ tariffs, the only thing America has been liberated from is trillions of dollars in investments.”

Trump has promised that the tariffs, imposed on almost every nation, will create huge wealth in America and has even suggested that federal income tax could be scrapped as a consequence. He has also refused to rule out an economic downturn later in the year as tariffs bed in.

“The Trump administration can still get the economy back on track through free trade with free nations, even as the US retains targeted tariffs on adversaries such as China,” Pence said. “Instead of punishing free nations, we should rally them — uniting the democratic world in trade agreements that isolate China, not Europe and our Pacific allies.”

Here’s Pence in 2024:

MIKE PENCE: “I cannot, in good conscience, endorse Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/AEpTC3hGmq

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 3, 2024

Here’s what Newsweek reported:

Former Vice President Mike Pence urged President Donald Trump to reverse course on the sweeping tariffs he announced in April.

In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Pence wrote that “economic warning signs are flashing” as he criticized Trump’s tariffs as a “massive policy misstep.”

Trump announced sweeping tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners on April 2 but reversed himself a few days later after a market meltdown, suspending the tariffs that he had called “reciprocal” for 90 days.

Pence and Trump fell out after he refused to go along with the latter’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. Now, he is among the few Republicans willing to publicly criticize the second Trump administration.

Pence began his op-ed by heaping praise on the president, writing that Trump’s victory in November was “a political comeback unrivaled in modern American history.”

He hailed Trump’s efforts on immigration, saying the president had not needed to enact any new laws because he was “just a president with the backbone to do his job and keep America safe.”

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport.

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