Former Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump administration’s aggressive use of tariffs poses a potential risk for Republicans in the midterm elections, even as he expressed relief about a walk-back of some of the most severe tariffs on allies.

Pence, in an exclusive interview with The Hill, raised concerns about the implementation of a baseline 10 percent tariff on several nations, as well as sector-specific tariffs on cars and metals. The former vice president described the second Trump administration as “off to a good start” but voiced reservations about what he called a “misstep” with the broad use of tariffs.

“I really believe that when people voted to send President Trump back to the White House, what I heard traveling across the country in the last four years was people wanted to see us get back to the policies of the Trump-Pence administration,” Pence told The Hill when asked if Trump’s tariff policies posed a risk to the GOP in the midterms.

“My sense is that, in addition to values respect for the right to life, respect for traditional family values I think that’s what people voted for,” he continued. “I don’t think in my heart of hearts, I don’t think the American people were voting for what would amount to the largest peacetime tax hike in American history, which, the tariffs that were announced last week, if left in place, would certainly be, and the hardship they’d place on working families and businesses large and small.”

Pence spoke to The Hill in his Washington, D.C., office just minutes after Trump announced he was increasing tariffs on China to 125 percent while placing a 10 percent tariff on other nations to allow time to negotiate deals.

The former vice president had warned against the potential economic impacts of the tariffs. His advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom, launched an ad campaign Monday pushing back on the tariffs as harmful for American farmers and consumers.

The Trump administration last week announced a baseline 10 percent tariffs on all foreign goods, as well as higher “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries such as India, China, Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Trump on Wednesday said he would lower the tariff rate to 10 percent for 90 days as countries seek to negotiate deals, except for China, which he announced would face increased tariffs as part of a tit-for-tat exchange.

Pence on Wednesday told The Hill he was “grateful” for Trump’s decision to grant a 90-day window where tariffs on many allies would be reduced to 10 percent.

“I have every confidence that our allies are going to come to the table. They’re going to sit down, they’re going to negotiate. But removing the tariffs that were imposed across the wider world to many of our most important trading partners and allies, to see that pause for 90 days, I think my family and millions of American families are breathing a sigh of relief today,” Pence said.

Pence said he was supportive of an aggressive approach toward China, pointing to the use of tariffs on Chinese goods during Trump’s first term as the president sought to broker a wider trade deal. Pence called China “the greatest economic and strategic threat our nation faces.”

Still, he argued broad tariffs would ultimately hurt working families, drive up prices for American consumers and be particularly harmful to small businesses.

“I know the president better than his most ardent defenders. … I know in the president’s mind that he sees tariffs as a way of exacting a cost of having access to our economy,” Pence told The Hill. “But the reality is that tariffs are paid by American companies importing goods from around the world so that then the cost of which is passed on to American consumers.”

Pence walks back Waltz controversy

Pence offered praise for White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, who has found himself under scrutiny after mistakenly adding a journalist to a Signal chat about an impending military strike.

“I expect it’s lessons learned. Conversations of a sensitive nature or a classified nature ought to take place in classified settings,” Pence told The Hill. 

“Now, mistakes get made with regard to classified information. But I have every confidence that the national security team around the president, notably Mike Waltz, who is a good man and a really inspiring military veteran, will button that up,” he added. “We won’t see that happen again.”

Trump’s ‘third term’

Pence’s most memorable moment as vice president came when he certified the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, despite a pressure campaign from Trump and his allies to reject former President Biden’s victory.

“While I think there’s a minority of Republicans who still differ with the stand that I took to support and defend the Constitution that day, my experience over the last four years has been very humbling,” Pence told The Hill. “People stopping me on the street. People from every walk of life and every political perspective have expressed appreciation.”

Trump has stoked fears among critics with some of his rhetoric in recent weeks in which he has repeatedly raised the prospect of seeking a third term in 2028, something that is prohibited by the Constitution. Allies have brushed off the comments as a way to rile up his opponents.

“I’m very familiar with the president’s sense of humor having served alongside him for four and a half years,” Pence said of Trump’s comments about a third term. “I have every hope that as time goes forward, the president will do what we did in our four years and, with the exception of that one fateful day, that we will both of us be champions of the Constitution of the United States.”

Pence on his role in the GOP

The former vice president has been ostracized from Trump’s orbit since his decision to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, “that one fateful day.” Pence also ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2023, and he declined to endorse Trump as the nominee.

So where does that leave him and his advocacy group in today’s Trump-driven Republican Party?

“What we see as our role is to be an anchor to windward, to essentially remind the party by calling balls and strikes on issues of our roots in the conservative movement,” Pence said. “Look, the party has grown under President Trump, and I give him all the credit in the world for attracting new voters to the Republican Party.”

Advancing American Freedom previously ran an ad campaign opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to serve as Health and Human Services secretary, citing his past comments on abortion. Kennedy was narrowly confirmed.

Pence chided some GOP senators without naming them who he said were “beginning to embrace big government solutions” and were partnering with liberal senators such as Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Asked about his future specifically, Pence was noncommittal.

“I’m not a long-term planner,” Pence said with a smile. “Whatever the future holds for me, we’ll let the future take care of itself. But we’re going to take care every day to champion those traditional conservative values and ideals that have always made this country strong and prosperous and free.”