UnHerd’s wide-ranging conversation with JD Vance, his first major interview with a European outlet since assuming office as Vice President, topped headlines in Britain, Europe, and America on Monday, sending the FTSE surging on news of a potential US-UK trade deal and prompting a positive response from the Starmer government. We are now pleased to present the full transcript of the conversation, which has been minimally edited for clarity.
Sohrab Ahmari: Mr. Vice President, please permit me to start with the headline of the day: I’m sure you saw President Zelenskyy’s recent remarks in which he said that you are ‘somehow justifying’ Vladimir Putin’s actions. How do you respond to that? And is it productive for the Kyiv government to approach the Trump administration in this manner?
JD Vance: It’s certainly not productive. I saw it, and I think Zelenskyy is wrong about that. I’ve repeatedly condemned the full-scale invasion that was launched in 2022, but like President Trump, I’ve also tried to apply strategic recognition that if you want to end the conflict, you have to try to understand where both the Russians and the Ukrainians see their strategic objectives. That doesn’t mean you morally support the Russian cause, or that you support the full-scale invasion, but you do have to try to understand what are their strategic red lines, in the same way that you have to try to understand what the Ukrainians are trying to get out of the conflict. So that you can negotiate a peace. And that’s what the President has been trying to do for a few months now, and I think it’s sort of absurd for Zelenskyy to tell the [American] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians. As the President said, ‘We’re not on anybody’s side, we’re on America’s side, and we happen to believe that America’s best interests are served through peace’.
SA: Looking beyond Ukraine, there have been a number of recent incidents that have led Europeans to conclude that you really don’t like Europe. Is that a fair assessment? And if not, what’s your message to European leaders, including some on the Right, who think, ‘Boy, he really doesn’t see any positive in us — just kind of, hammers us relentlessly, publicly and even privately when he’s addressing other administration principals’?
JDV: It’s certainly not right. I love Europe, I love European people. I’ve said repeatedly that I think that you can’t separate American culture from European culture. We’re very much a product of philosophies, theologies, and, of course, migration patterns that came out of Europe that launched the United States of America. . . . I love the different cultures, I certainly think that Europe has a lot to offer the world.
I also think that European leaders have been a little asleep at the wheel. What they find so shocking is that we’re just being honest about a new strategic reality. And there are a couple of things that are happening simultaneously.
The first is, we’re very frustrated — ‘we’ meaning me, the President, certainly the entire Trump administration — that European populations keep on, frankly, crying out for more sensible economic and migration policies, and the leaders of Europe keep on going through these elections, and keep on offering the European peoples the opposite of what they seem to have voted for. That’s something I really worry about. The entire democratic project of the West falls apart when the people keep on asking for less migration, and they keep on being rewarded by their leaders for more migration. Obviously, I think there’s an economic component to that, there’s a cultural component to that. But I think most importantly, voters have the right to decide what they want. I say that as a friend, not as someone who’s pointing fingers and saying, ‘You guys are really screwing this up’ — but as a person who really respects and loves Europe. That part of actually surviving and thriving in the 21st century is to be responsive to the will of the people on the migration question. That’s something that frankly American leaders and European leaders have screwed up for close to a half a century. And I’m saying, ‘Look, just as President Trump has taken the concerns of voters seriously, we encourage our friends our friends in Europe to take their concerns seriously’.
I mentioned there are two issues. That’s one: the question of migration, how to have a common-sense migration policy in the 21st century, really sits atop of a lot of the debates we’ve had in the West, and our European friends are [facing issues] that are really no different than the issues we’re confronting in America.
The second, of course, is the security posture. Look, the reality is — it’s blunt to say it, but it’s also true — that Europe’s entire security infrastructure for my entire life has been subsidised by the United States of America. Twenty to twenty-five years ago, you could say that Europe had many vibrant militaries, at least militaries that could defend their own homelands. Today, in 2025, most European nations don’t have militaries that can provide for their reasonable defense. The British are an obvious exception, the French are an obvious exception, the Poles are an obvious exception. But in some ways, they’re the exceptions that prove the rule, that European leaders have radically underinvested in security, and that has to change. And it has to change in part because the United States needs to focus on Asia, on our security interests there.
But I also just think it’s not good for Europe to be the permanent security vassal of the United States. And what I find so shocking in some of the European leadership’s response to some of what I say is, that I’m echoing a great European statesman called Charles de Gaulle, who I think loved the United States of America, but obviously had disagreements with America. But [he] recognised what I certainly recognise, that it’s not in Europe’s interest and it’s not in America’s interest for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.
SA: But haven’t we Americans also benefited from the status quo, from the fact that European capitals bandwagon with Washington, even when they disagree with our foreign-policy decisions? To put it bluntly, might it not be bad forEurope to be too independent?
JDV: I definitely think that America and Europe will continue to thrive with the economic and security relationships of our two separate continents. I don’t think that Europe being more independent is bad for the United States — it’s good for the United States. Just going back through history, I think, frankly, the British and the French were certainly right in their disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal. Something I know a little bit more personally, I think a lot of European nations were right about our invasion of Iraq. And frankly, if the Europeans had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up, then maybe we could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq. A more independent Europe, yes, is going to lead to more conversations, sometimes even more debates. But I just don’t think that Americans in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies asked if France were real allies, even though there were real disagreements. But I think it’s OK for allies to have disagreements. And that’s what I want Europe to be. I want it to be an ally. I want it to be a strong, independent ally, obviously each individual country to be independent strong allies. I don’t want the Europeans to just do whatever the Americans tell them to do. I don’t think it’s in their interest, and I don’t think it’s in our interests, either.
“I definitely think that America and Europe will continue to thrive with the economic and security relationships of our two separate continents.”
SA: Is there a UK-US trade deal in the offing, a carve-out for the special alliance amid the tariff regime? And would you see it happening under the Starmer government?
JDV: We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government. The President really loves the United Kingdom. He loved the Queen. He admires and loves the King. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [Britain]. But I think it’s much deeper than that. There’s a real cultural affinity. And of course, fundamentally America is an Anglo country: our legal system, our culture and values is very much an offshoot of what was going on the British Isles for hundreds of years.
We’re working very hard on a trade deal with the Starmer government. I don’t want to prejudge it, but I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.
With other Europeans, we work hard to reach a more balanced trade relationship. [Already,] with the United Kingdom, we have a much more reciprocal relationship than we have with, say, Germany. While we love the Germans, they are heavily dependent on exporting to the United States but are pretty tough on a lot of American businesses that would like to export into Germany. So this concept of fairness that the President really cares about in our trade relationship, without prejudging the results, I think it will lead to a lot of positive trade relationships with Europe. And again, we very much see Europe as our ally. We just want it to be an alliance where Europeans are a little more independent, and our security and trade relationships are gonna reflect that.
SA: What’s the key metric of success for the new tariff regime? What will have had to happen in, say, three years’ time when we speak again, God willing, for you to conclude, ‘OK, we did it’ or ‘OK, we got a good part of the way there’?
JDV: We want to is lower trade deficits, really across the board. Sometimes, a trade deficit makes sense. Like, America doesn’t produce bananas. So obviously, we’re gonna be importing bananas, not exporting bananas. So with certain product categories and maybe even with some countries, a small trading deficit can be justified. But what the global trading system has led to, is large and persistent trade deficits across product categories, with the gross majority of countries really using the United States [home market] to absorb their surplus exports. That’s been bad for us. It’s been bad for American manufacturers. It’s been bad for workers. And God forbid, if the America ever fought a future war, it would be bad for America’s troops. And so we really want to see a significant rebalancing. So what I want to be able to see a few years from now, is that our trade deficit as a share of GDP is much lower.
SA: Over the past week, have you had heart-sinking moments looking at financial markets? Or looking at your own portfolio? I ask this as someone who supports these tariffs and was calling for a post-neoliberal world trade order going back years. But I’d be lying if I said there’ve been no moments when I went, ‘Whoa, what if this thing goes really upside down’? Have you had similar thoughts over the past week, and if so, how do you process them?
JDV: Any implementation of a new system is fundamentally going to make financial markets jittery. The President has been very consistent that this is a long-term play. That he really wants to rebalance trade in the interests of American workers and manufacturers. And that fundamentally, you can’t let short-term fluctuations in the market change how you think about the long term. Now, of course, you have to be responsive to what the business community is telling you, what workers are telling you, what bond markets are telling you. These are all variables that we have to be responsive to to make the policy successful. But the goal is the success of the policy. No plan is, you know, going to be implemented perfectly. No plan is not going to require adjustments. We certainly recognise that we want to rebalance global trade, other countries are going to respond to that, we’re going to have to respond to that. We want to do something in the markets, the markets are going to respond, we have to respond to that [in turn]. We’re very cognisant of the fact that we live in a complicated world where nobody else’s decisions are static. But the fundamental policy is to rebalance global trade, and I think the President has been very clear and persistent on that.
SA: You have been described as our first very-online Vice President. Do you worry that you tweet too much, though?
JDV: [Laughs] There are many blessings to this job. One unquestioned downside is that I very much live in a bubble. I’m surrounded by Secret Service agents. It’s very hard for a random person to walk up to me — in fact, it’s damned near impossible. I see social media as a useful, albeit imperfect, way to stay in touch with what’s going on in the country at large. And there are a lot of other things I do to stay in touch, to make sure that the bubble of the vice presidency doesn’t make it impossible for me to hear the concerns of the people that I serve. I probably spend way less time on Twitter than I did six months ago, that’s probably good for me. But I’ve gotta try really hard to stay connected. Because the White House, the West Wing, the vice presidency are by design a bubble. And to be a good Vice President, I have to stay outside of that bubble as much as I can.
