Top foreign policy takeaways from the vice presidential debate

When it comes to the broad strokes of US trade policy with China—the need to "derisk" the US economy and bring manufacturing back to the United States—the Harris and Trump tickets largely align, and Walz said as much.

However, he fought back on Vance's charges that a Harris presidency wouldn't go far enough. "I'm a union guy on this. I'm not a guy who wanted to ship things overseas. … We need to have fair trading partners," Walz said. Harris was against tariffs during her presidential bid four years ago, but her campaign recently told the New York Times that she supports "targeted and strategic tariffs." Walz also fired back on Trump's own trade record, pointing out that the trade deficit with China reached record highs under his presidency.

Walz also supported the administration's approach to climate change. The Inflation Reduction Act, which gives tax credits and subsidies for clean energy manufacturing in the United States and aims to reduce reliance on China, has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, Walz said.

The governor was put on the defensive when the moderators asked about his long personal history with China. Walz taught in Guangdong province shortly after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and later took his American students to China on more than a dozen trips before going into government.

When asked about past false statements that he had made saying he was in Hong Kong when the Tiananmen protests occurred, Walz became flustered and said he misspoke. But he then went on to repeat that he was "in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests." (He arrived in August; the protests took place in the weeks leading up to June 4, 1989.)

Walz took the opportunity to defend his travel to China as an eye-opening and informative experience. "I learned a lot about China. I hear the critiques of this—I would make the case that Donald Trump should have come on one of those trips with us. I guarantee you he wouldn't be praising Xi Jinping about COVID," Walz said. Republicans have tried to paint Walz as sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party because of his travels in China, but Walz has been a consistent critic of the Chinese government and its poor human rights record.

Immigration

The debate on immigration and US border security initially centred on a Trump-Vance pledge to carry out the largest mass deportation plan in US history. Vance doubled down on that promise, vowing to begin carrying it out by deporting undocumented immigrants who have criminal backgrounds. He also accused Harris—whom Biden tasked with overseeing the administration's efforts to address the "root causes" of migration, particularly in Latin America—of "letting in fentanyl" to the United States by undoing many of Trump's executive actions restricting border openings. However, Harris was never put in charge of US border security.

Vance railed at what he said was Harris's flawed immigration record and pushed for restarting border wall construction. However, the moderators were forced to mute Vance's mic after he brought up alleged migrants living in Springfield, Ohio, who were granted legal status "at the wave of the Kamala Harris open border wand"—alluding to a false, racist conspiracy theory that both Vance and Trump have spread saying Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating their neighbours' pets.

Walz focused on Harris's efforts to combat fentanyl and criticized Trump's immigration record, saying that "Mexico didn't pay a dime" to build the border wall. He falsely said that under Biden-Harris, border crossings went down compared with Trump's time in office. And he refuted Vance's false claims that the Democratic nominee is purposefully allowing migrants to enter the country illegally in her role as vice president.

Walz has previously supported immigration reform that offers paths to citizenship for certain undocumented immigrants, such as essential workers, Dreamers, and temporary protected status holders. In March 2023, he signed a law making immigrants of any status in Minnesota eligible to apply for a driver's license.

The State of US Democracy

One of the most heated moments of the night came at the end of the debate when the two candidates discussed the health of US democracy and the validity of the 2020 election. Walz repeatedly denounced the deadly 6 January 2021 insurrection and painted Harris as a champion of democracy at large. "Democracy is bigger than winning an election," Walz said, warning that Vance would ultimately only serve Trump, not the American people and democracy itself.

When Walz asked Vance if he believes that Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance quickly pivoted away from the question. "That is a damning nonanswer," the Democratic candidate said.

In response, Vance accused Harris of not protecting freedoms of speech and expression. Citing allegations that the Biden administration pressured social media companies such as Meta to remove COVID-19-related misinformation from their platforms, Vance said Harris "is engaged in censorship at an industrial scale," without providing concrete examples of in what capacity.

He compared Trump's support for an alleged incitement of the 6 January insurrection—the only time in US history that a candidate tried to overturn the ratified results of a presidential election—to Democrats' past statements regarding Russian election interference in the 2016 election, when Kremlin-linked proxies purchased Facebook ads to try to tip the vote in favour of Trump against then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Vance did not answer the moderators' question about whether he would refute a future election determination ratified by all US governors, which experts say would be unconstitutional. Instead, he said all electoral issues should be debated "peacefully."