More likely: Vance thinks the Crackpot Coalition will give him the numbers he needs to fend off a challenge from the old coalition of traditional limited-government conservatives and free-market types in the primary. He has more or less stated as much in his tirades against "Fusionism 2.0" and his conspiracy theories about the "libertarian donor network" that supposedly controls the right. Vance's strategy right now is to build up the Crackpot Coalition as a preemptive buffer against an expected challenge from the mainstream right. This includes: - Use Tucker Carlson and other "influencers" to normalize racists and desensitize the public to them through bigotry-fatigue, so that by 2028 "normie" voters are not immediately repulsed by their outsized presence in the Vance coalition - Stack the administrative state, the postliberal think tank scene, and the political apparatus of Trumpworld with radical-reactionary intern types who are intentionally selected and curated for edgelord bigotry and personal loyalty to the postliberal cause. Vance-controlled groups like American Moment have made this their explicit mission, along with keeping out free-market and limited government types. - Deploy the hyperonline Vanceguard activists to harass, bully, smear, and cancel anyone who criticizes Vance, no matter how valid, and to cultivate a public perception that Vance is the inevitable heir apparent to Trump. This is the whole grifter scene's mission at the moment around Posobiec and similar trashcasters.

This is just embarrassingly incompetent "economic" reasoning. Tariffs affect a consumer surplus transfer to the beneficiary industry by specifically and intentionally raising prices. Wishcasting about some future price decrease in their wake is not a serious argument.

I found the NatCon tariff protectionist version of the Marxist randos who come onto my feed and declare "You haven't read Marx!"