Vice President JD Vance on Thursday slammed former President Joe Biden’s administration during a speech at Nucor Steel Berkeley for deciding that products would be made overseas instead of in the United States.

Vance said that over the last few decades, political leaders forgot about the “core part of American national identity” by allowing the U.S. to rely on foreign powers for essential goods. The vice president said manufacturing facilities like Nucor immensely struggled over the last four years due to the Biden administration’s “crushing environmental regulations.”

“For a couple decades, though, our leaders forgot about that core part of American national identity. They decided that America would no longer be a manufacturing power,” Vance said. “Instead, we let the rest of the world make the necessary things that we needed for our homes and for our families. And when a nation decides to deindustrialize my friends, you know what else they stop using? The intermediate goods, the things that are essential to manufacturing, like steel that you all make right here in Nucor. So we stopped making the things that we needed.”