Washington DC - Vice President JD Vance is well known to have been a critic of President Donald Trump in his past life, but his support of the administration's trade policy goes right against some of his core messages.

CNN reports that as recently as 2019, Vance railed against Trump's moves to try to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US from countries like Mexico and China, where labor is cheaper.

Instead of bringing back old jobs, Vance argued that workers should be retrained and prepared for work in future industries that will be more sustainable as the economy changes and technology evolves.

"I don’t think that there’s a simple, 'Let’s bring the coal or steel jobs back,'" Vance said in 2017, before calling for workers to be re-employed in "next generation jobs" with good wages.

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"I’m not an economist, but I can spot a bad argument," he wrote, referring to the view that economic strife comes down purely to the loss of manufacturing jobs being replaced by automation.

Vance also came out against Trump's attempts at trade protectionism long before his second administration launched an unprecedented trade war on virtually the entire world.

Referring to research that suggested increased Chinese imports are putting a strain on US labor, he argued against a massive trade war with Beijing.

"Does that mean that we should be hyper-protectionists in our approach to trade? I would argue no," he said in 2017.

"I do think that trade hasn’t necessarily been in the best interests of a lot of these communities. Now, the question of whether you can go backwards in time, I think the answer is no," he said.