Sen. J.D. Vance stopped in Reading, Pennsylvania on Saturday to participate in a town hall style event alongside ex-ESPN host Sage Steele, where he took questions from voters with just 23 days until the Nov. 5 election. 

Mr. Vance, fresh from a campaign rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, addressed topics that included tackling the housing crisis, election security, staying competitive against China, fighting against the spread of Communism, a Trump-Vance administration’s approach to the Justice Department and what a Trump White House would do for small businesses. 

Pennsylvania has become a routine stop for the Trump and Harris campaigns, and a battleground state that election analysts and pollsters view as the likely key to the White House. 

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The latest poll of the race, released on Saturday from the New York Times and Siena College, showed that Vice President Kamala Harris led former President Donald Trump 50% to 47%. Polling aggregate Real Clear Polling has Mr. Trump ahead in the Keystone State by less than a point. 

The Republican candidate for Vice President said that the thing he worries the most about is “protecting America’s manufacturing sector,” in particular from China. He argued, like in many of his answers throughout the hour-long event, that one major step to bolstering the country’s manufacturing sector against China was to begin more domestic energy production. 

“We’re in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Mr. Vance said. “We’re sitting on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We just got to unleash that, and …that will lower costs, of course, for everybody, because all of us use energy, and we all use things that are made out of energy, but it also makes it easier to manufacture in the United States of America.”

Mr. Trump has been aggressive in his pursuit of extracting fossil fuels to boost the country’s energy production, particularly fracking in Pennsylvania, and has long tied many of America’s economic woes to Ms. Harris’ championing of the Green New Deal. 

Mr. Vance also said that the best way to compete against China, which he said used “slave labor” for its workforce, was to impose tariffs against the country. 

“Sometimes you don’t even have to do the tariff, you just have to threaten it, right? And that’s what President Trump understood about this more than anybody, because he is a business guy, is you got to be willing to use your leverage in a negotiation,” Mr. Vance said. 

Mr. Trump imposed tariffs against China during his first term, many of which the Biden administration has kept, and has floated putting more stringent tariffs against the country should he be reelected. 

But nonpartisan tax groups have warned that if Mr. Trump were to follow through with any variation of his tariff plans, it could add billions to the taxes paid by Americans. 

Mr. Vance, in responding to a question from an audience member whose family had fled a Communist country and immigrated to America, said that many Americans don’t worry about Communism or Socialism because of the country’s “broken” education system. 

Since she entered the race, the Trump-Vance campaign has labeled Ms. Harris as a communist and socialist, particularly for her policy ideas that include establishing price caps on groceries and a vast amount of proposed government subsidies. 

“Now you’ve got American children, they might, you know, be able to say that there are 87 genders, but they can’t, like, add two plus two, right? And we’ve, we’ve injected so much progressive politics into our education system,” he said. 

Another audience member questioned how a Trump-Vance White House would “reign in” the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump and the GOP have dubbed as corrupt and driven to target the Biden administration’s political opponents for the string of federal indictments and numerous charges against the former president. 

Mr. Vance said that a Trump White House would “fire the people who are responsible for the corruption of our Department of Justice,” particularly anyone leftover from Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.  

He also touched on the importance of the GOP flipping the Senate, which would grant a Trump White House an easier pathway to confirming nominations through the upper chamber, and urged voters to support Republican Senate candidate David McCormick, who is running against Sen. Bob Casey, Pennsylvania Democrat.  

While Mr. Vance has spent the last few months touring through swing states to support Mr. Trump’s bid for the White House, he acknowledged that his position as vice president was not near as important as another job within a possible second Trump administration.

“The most important job after, President of the United States, in the next administration, it’s not me, it’s who we select as Attorney General,” Mr. Vance said. “You need an attorney general who believes in true equal justice under law.”