Trade Deal with Japan Stands to Benefit Vermont Business, while Democrats Tell Conflicting Lies

After this week’s announcement of a new trade deal with Japan, VTGOP Chairman Paul Dame identified some of the opportunities the new deal presents to producers in Vermont in the following statement:

“Vermont’s top export category is semiconductor manufacturing, and the new trade deal with Japan secures new sources of funding and investment for plants like the one in Essex Junction. There will also be $8 Billion invested from Japan in various agricultural sectors that give Vermont farmers a brand new market for their corn and other produce. This is great news for people and businesses in Vermont who make and export goods and services around the world.

And while Vermont businesses celebrate this new opportunity, Vermont’s Democrats are promoting fear mongering and creating projections that are so off-base they contradict themselves.

Earlier this year State Treasurer Mike Pieciak made a wildly irresponsible claim when he said Vermonters would LOSE a billion dollars. Then today, just three months later, the Democrat party’s social media accounts are claiming there are only $32 Million in costs. This means that even Pieciak’s own party agrees that his claims have proven wildly inaccurate. But this is what happens when Democrats are publishing and promoting numbers that are being made up for political purposes, and they both lack the discipline and moderation that should accompany good governance and reliable communication.”

Chairman Dame added, “If even the Vermont Democrats think their State Treasurer made projections that are almost 20 TIMES too large - and these errors are contradicted just three months after publicizing them - perhaps Vermonters have much more to worry about when it comes to the Treasurer’s other projections related to our state treasury, the costs of new programs he has proposed and how this affects the state employee pension fund.”

Citations:
According to the White House the new deal with Japan could put a few Vermont producers in a better position:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-unprecedented-u-s-japan-strategic-trade-and-investment-agreement/

-”Japan will purchase $8 billion in U.S. goods, including corn”
-”Additional billions of dollars annually of purchases of U.S. defense equipment”
(Which could possibly benefit companies like General Dynamics and G.S. Precision)
-”[F]unds will be targeted toward the revitalization of America’s strategic industrial base, including: Semiconductor manufacturing and research, rebuilding U.S. capacity from design to fabrication”

For Context on Democrat Contradictions:

Back in April Vermont State Treasurer and Democrat Darling Mike Pieciak made a wildly irresponsible claim that bordered on fearmongering when he used his official capacity as State Treasurer to project that Trump Tariffs would cost Vermonters over $1 Billion:

https://www.vermonttreasurer.gov/press-releases/treasurers-office-reports-trump-tariffs-will-cost-vermonters-estimated-1-billion

The calculations he made were overly simplistic and demonstrated that the State Treasurer was sloppy, and not well researched when he made these alarming claims. This suggests that they were crafted with highly partisan aims in mind. Treasurer Pieciak cited a national study, but then in his press release cited a list of import partners that were not well documented which showed Vermonters import more goods from Trinidad & Tobago than from Mexico. That could be possible, but such a claim demands further citation.

Some of Treasurer Pieciak’s claims about a Billion dollars in tariffs for Vermonters seem especially absurd when the Vermont Department of Labor estimated that our total gross imports for the entire state was just $3.77 Billion, and many of the other import numbers are completely inconsistent with the following report from Assistant Director of Economic & Labor Market Information:
https://www.vtlmi.info/KevinsCorner3.12.2025_Vt_International_Trade.pdf

Then today the VT Democrats made the following post on their X feed which seriously undermined the Treasurer’s estimate. The post also failed to cite any kind of reliable source for the claim that tariffs had already cost a measly $32.5 Million, which would account for less than 7% of the impact that Treasurer Pieciak drew attention to just three months ago.

https://x.com/vtdems/status/1948365516034167034

The reality is that international trade is such a complex and nuanced field right now, that Democrats have no basis to make claims about the final cost to Vermonters when there are so many variables, many of which they intentionally ignore for partisan political reasons.

This raises several questions:
- Why are VT Democrats and the Democrat State Treasurer putting out wildly different numbers?
- Does Treasurer Pieciak now admit that his April estimates were overly inflated? Or does he believe that Vermont Democrats have made a mistake?
- Do Vermont Democrats concede that Treasurer Pieciak was way off base in April? Or did they publish numbers today that they believe are inaccurate?