Vice President J.D. Vance speaks during a rally at the Uline shipping supplies warehouse in Lower Macungie Township, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (Photo by Peter Hall/Capital-Star)
As Tuesday’s long-awaited jobs report reinforced concerns about a stagnant economy, Vice President J.D. Vance rallied a group of supporters in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, saying the nation is on the brink of economic recovery.
“It takes time to fix something that was so fundamentally broken,” Vance said during a 30-minute speech at a shipping supply warehouse in Lehigh County. Vance has repeatedly blamed rising costs on the previous administration.
“When I hear Democrats talk about the affordability crisis they have created, it’s a bit like Charles Manson criticizing violent crime. Look in the mirror, my friend, you are the cause of the problem, and the Donald J. Trump administration is the solution,” Vance said.
The US economy is struggling to recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought record unemployment, supply chain disruptions and production shutdowns. Global uncertainty over the war in Ukraine, worker shortages and stimulus spending have helped push prices up further as the pandemic subsides.
The Trump administration has been in office for almost 11 months, and economists say the administration’s economic policies are they don’t lend a hand.
While Vance touted wage growth and foreign investment in U.S. manufacturing, Tuesday’s November jobs report, delayed by a 43-day government shutdown this fall, showed growth stagnating. Experts attributed this trend to the effects of Trump’s tariffs, persistent inflation and global instability.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. employers added 64,000 jobs in November. However, the unemployment rate rose to 4.6% last month, its highest level in four years.
The agency reported this at the beginning of the month Average weekly earnings of U.S. workers increased by 4.2% in the third quarter compared to the previous year.
“That means we’re seeing the fastest private sector wage growth that we’ve seen in this country in many, many years, and we’re doing it because of a president and an administration that believes in you and fights for you,” Vance said.
But the report included changes to charts of 105,000 job losses in October, largely reflecting the layoff of tens of thousands of government workers who accepted a deferred departure package offered as part of the administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce. Revisions to the report also showed a net loss of 108,000 jobs in September and 26,000 in August.
Tuesday’s event had the same message and the same branding – “Lower Costs, Bigger Payouts” – as when Trump spoke a week earlier, 60 miles away at a casino in the Poconos.
During a question and answer session with reporters, Vance responded: Interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday, in which Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles claimed that Vance has been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
“Sometimes I’m a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in conspiracy theories that are true,” Vance said, citing as an example that he believes masking juvenile children during the Covid-19 pandemic is inappropriate and, without providing evidence, alleging that Democrats and the media covered up “the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job.”
In September 2024, Vance repeated false claims about Haitian immigrantS in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats and dogs, and later said, “If I have to create stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, that’s what I’ll do.”
The rally also featured speeches from two of Pennsylvania’s top 2026 Republican Party candidates: U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-7th District), who is running for re-election in a competitive district, and Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who plans to challenge popular Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Garrity’s mention of Shapiro drew boos from the crowd of about 500 people. She criticized the governor, considered a 2028 presidential candidate, for focusing more “on Pennsylvania Avenue than on Pennsylvania families.”
“Instead of working with the Trump-Vance administration, Josh Shapiro is fighting it,” Garrity said.
Speaking at a Harrisburg fire station on Tuesday, Shapiro responded to Vance’s comments by painting a rosy picture of the economy, saying the vice president is out of touch with the feelings of Pennsylvanians. He said Vance was afraid to tell the truth because it would “upset his boss.”
“So instead he came to Pennsylvania and lied like his boss did when he was in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said, noting the costs the number of imperative items in supermarkets has increased in the first year of the Trump administration.
Trump’s import tariffs led to retaliatory taxes that closed markets to American farmers and increased the price of inputs such as fertilizers.
“I think we can understand the president’s tariffs as a failed policy. A failed policy. The only thing he has proven is that he knows how to raise prices for Americans. We are in a worse situation because of the economic policies of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro noted that the vice president spoke a few miles from the Allentown Mack Trucks plant, where commercial vehicles were manufactured 250 to 350 employees were dismissed last spring, blaming economic uncertainty resulting from Trump’s tariffs.
Asked by a reporter how long it might take for consumers to see lower costs, Vance repeated the claim that inflation under Biden was the equivalent of $3,000 taken out of every American’s pocket.
“It’s going to take a while for them to really feel like it’s putting money back in their pocket. It just takes a long time. It’s a lot of work,” Vance said.
Vance answered a question about health care costs and health care extension efforts tax benefits under Affordable Care AcT. Some Republican lawmakers, particularly those in battleground districts where Democrats hope to win back seats next year including Mackenziehave called for this extension to be included in bipartisan health care reform bills.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana) said Tuesday that: will not allow majority voting this week on a bipartisan amendment extending tax breaks.
Vance noted that the Trump administration has negotiated lower costs for some high-priced drugs, but said health care reform is the responsibility of Congress.
“We are working with Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, to find a solution,” Vance said. “Obamacare was broken. Donald J. Trump wants to fix it, but Congress needs to step in.”
The poll released Tuesday shows Trump’s approval rating at 39%, near the lowest level of his second term. According to A Reuters/Ipsos afterllJust 33% of respondents said they approved of Trump’s handling of the economy.
Vance said he is not concerned that ongoing concerns about affordability will translate into vulnerability for Republicans in the midterm elections.
“I believe Americans will reward us because Americans are smart,” he said. “They know Rome wasn’t built in a day. They know what Joe Biden broke can’t be fixed in a week.”
Capital-Star reporter Whitney Downard contributed to this report.
This story was originally produced by The star of Pennsylvania’s capitalwhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
