Pence Assails Trump for Shifting to ‘Permanent’ Tariff Barriers

Former Vice President Mike Pence criticized Donald Trump’s tariff agenda, saying it was a starkly different approach to trade from his first term that would harm American consumers and businesses.

Pence told Bloomberg Television on Thursday that the tariffs enacted during Trump’s first presidency, when Pence served as the No. 2, were geared toward forcing nations to the negotiating table to lower barriers to trade. Pence said Trump was abandoning that approach for permanent import taxes.

“We used tariffs and the threat of tariffs, principally focused on China, to leverage changes in behavior, but the objective was to essentially ...