VP Vance: ‘Globalization’s Hunger for Cheap Labor Is a Problem, Precisely Because It’s Been Bad for Innovation’

TRANSCRIPT:

VANCE: "I’d ask my friends both on the tech optimist side and on the populist side not to see the failure of the logic of globalization as a failure of innovation. Indeed, I’d say that globalization's hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it’s been bad for innovation. Both our working people, our populists, and our innovators gathered here today have the same enemy, and the solution, I believe, is American innovation, because in the long run it’s technology that increases the value of labor. Innovations like the American system and the interchangeable parts revolution it sparked or Ford’s moving assembly line that skyrocketed the productivity of our workers — that’s how American industry became the envy of the world. And that’s what I really want to talk about today, why innovation is key to winning the worldwide manufacturing competition, to giving our workers a fair deal and to reclaiming our heritage via America’s great industrial come back, and I believe that’s what we’re on the cusp of, a great American industrial come back."