China strongly condemned this morning remarks from Vice President J.D. Vance referring to Chinese workers as “peasants.”

Vance made the remarks in defense of President Trump’s 34% tariff on Chinese imports that is scheduled to go into effect Wednesday, April 9th.

“I think it’s useful for all of us to take a step back and ask ourselves, what has the globalized economy gotten the United States of America?” Vance said on Fox & Friends last week.

“Fundamentally, it’s based on two principles, incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things other countries make for us … We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things that Chinese peasants manufacture,” he added.

This morning, China called Vance “ignorant and impolite” in response to his remark, reported Politico.

“It is surprising and sad to hear such ignorant and impolite words from this vice president,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Tuesday, according to the BBC. “”China’s position on China-US economic and trade relations has been made very clear.”

China has stood up to Trump’s threats and has hit back with its own 34% tariff on U.S. imports. In a tit for tat, Trump has threatened to increase tariffs on Chinese imports another 50%.

Vance has described himself as a “hillbilly.”

‘To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart,’ he wrote in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

His ancestors migrated from Barnbarroch in Wigtonshire, Scotland to the Northern Ulster province of Ireland prior to coming to the United States.

The irony of Vance’s remarks hit some on X.

“He says ‘Chinese peasants’ with such venom and condescension. You would think the poverty in which he grew up would give him some empathy, but instead it did the opposite,” said one X user.

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