Vice President JD Vance arrives to speak during a tour of a precision metal stamping facility Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025, in Howell, Mich. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

On Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance spoke at Hatch Stamping Company, a factory in Chelsea, Mich. that supports many policies that Vance claims to vehemently disagree with, including outsourcing jobs and addressing climate change.

While speaking, Vance thanked the owners of Hatch and called it a great American facility.

“But you guys, this is a great facility,” Vance said. “And one of the things they told me is that business got maybe a little tough, a little uncertain when they had a president of the United States who was obsessed with telling everybody to drive an electric vehicle because too many of those electric vehicle components were not made in America.”

He continued: “But now that we are leaning into great, American-made automobiles, Hatch is doing better, the American auto worker is doing better and President Trump and I are proud to fight for you each and every single day.”

 

According to the company’s website, Hatch touts the fact that it has manufacturing facilities in Changshu, China and Queretaro, Mexico, along with plans to expand to Germany and Spain. A video on the website says, “Today, Hatch has an impressive global footprint in the world of industrial manufacturing.”

During a speaking event in March, Vance bashed American companies for manufacturing in outside the United States, calling it “the most punitive economic policies” in the world.

“So if you’ve gotten rich the last few decades by ripping off U.S. companies and preying on American workers, well, the president is simply telling you the jig is up,” Vance said in March. “If you want to manufacture in China, which has the worst and most punitive economic policies towards us anywhere in the world, then you are going to have to pay the consequences.”

Vance has also called losing manufacturing industries to Mexico and China “one of the great American tragedies” of the last 40 years.

In addition to outsourcing, Hatch is also publicly committed to the use of renewable energy to “protect the safety of people and the environment.” The company’s website features sections on environmental policy, energy efficiency, waste reduction and carbon emission reduction. Under President Donald Trump’s second administration, Republicans have doubled down on denying the existence of climate change and gutting clean energy and environmental protection initiatives supported by Democrats.

Vance himself is skeptical of climate experts and does not believe there is a climate crisis at all. Among climate scientists, there is near universal consensus that humans are negatively impacting Earth’s environment.

Hatch’s website also features a section on “Diversity and Inclusion,” which the Trump administration has erroneously used as a scapegoat for airline disasters, wildfires and “biased employment practices.” In 2021, Vance said that companies use DEI programs to distract from their use of “slave labor.”

Vance’s team did not immediately respond to a request to comment on why he spoke at and compliment a company that utilizes policies he clearly does not support.