Trump’s J.D. Vance pick unnerves GOP’s business elite, thrills populists

The first-term senator has embraced a more active role for government intervention in the economy than most Republicans, emerging as a leader of a minority faction among GOP senators that also includes Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). Vance has praised President Biden’s antitrust crusader at the Federal Trade Commission, called for a higher minimum wage and even once called for raising taxes on corporations — all positions anathema to conservatives. The departure is particularly stark compared with the vice president of Trump’s first term, Mike Pence, who branded himself as an adherent of Ronald Reagan by embodying GOP orthodoxy on everything from deficits to taxes, or former House speaker Paul D. Ryan, another GOP vice-presidential nominee known for his free-market orthodoxy.

“It’s clear to most leaders of the party that the future will be the Vances, the Hawleys and the Rubios — to have one of them be on the ticket is a very significant marker, or in some ways validation, of the direction the Republican Party is now heading on key economic issues,” said Oren Cass, a Vance ally and president of American Compass, a think tank closely tied to the economic populists in the GOP. “Vance articulates a very clear perspective on the failure of what he’ll call the ‘market fundamentalism’ of the GOP — the consensus economic policy of the last few decades.”

Vance’s predecessor, former senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), was also viewed as closely allied with the party’s traditional GOP policymakers.

“The emergence of Trump has caused a populist, aggressive side of the GOP to split off on economics, and Vance is one of the leaders of that populist caucus,” said Brian Riedl, who served as an aide to Portman and is now at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “Trump is much more economically populist, anti-free trade than traditional Republicans, and Vance has pushed hard to support this new populist economics in the GOP.”

Vance’s rise has rankled some GOP elites: Many top party donors opposed the pick, including Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire president of the hedge fund Citadel, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. In a statement, Griffin said Trump had “many good choices for Vice President, and I appreciate the thoughtful deliberation of the President and his team.”

Pence is now tied to a conservative think tank working to counter the influence of Vance and his allies on economic policy. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was also opposed to Vance, pushing North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who espouses more traditional Republican economic views, according to two other people with knowledge of the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. (Murdoch’s preference for Burgum and opposition to Vance was first reported by NOTUS.)

Alarm over Vance’s connection to Cass’s American Compass group and support for FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan has spread among top business executives and donors, said one senior business figure, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid opinions. Vance said earlier this year that Khan is “doing a pretty good job,” citing the FTC crackdown on tech giants.

“He has a lot of unconventional views on the economic front that run contrary to a lot of things conservative Republicans have traditionally stood for,” said one GOP strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations, in an interview before the selection was announced. “Major donors and business leaders will be dismayed if he’s the vice-presidential pick.”

Despite those differences, Vance is now one of the leaders of a party firmly committed to many tenets of traditional free market ideology. Deregulation of businesses, cutting taxes, reducing federal spending on social programs, limiting the power of the U.S. government — all are key priorities not just of the GOP overall but of Trump specifically.

Trump, for instance, has called for extending the GOP’s 2017 tax law, which sharply reduced corporate and estate taxes and was heavily criticized as a giveaway to the rich. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated middle-income taxpayers would save $900 on average from the law in 2025, compared to an estimated $61,000 saved by the average taxpayer in the top 1 percent that year.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, which pushes lower taxes, said Vance had signed his organization’s pledge to not support tax increases.

“He’s a Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump tax cut supporter — he’s made that clear every time he’s spoken about the issue,” Norquist said. “People sometimes point to him because he did the ‘I’m from Appalachia thing,’ as if that means he’d be open to the populist politics.”

Democrats also say the break represented by the new GOP vanguard is overstated. Vance may nod in a more populist direction, but is likely to march in lockstep behind a Trump agenda heavily favored by big business groups, they say. Vance has not yet backed anywhere near the scale of government intervention Democrats say is necessary to deal with numerous crises facing families — child care, health care, housing and more. Vance opposed Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which devoted hundreds billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies to revive domestic manufacturing. Some top donors may oppose his ascension, but Vance has long been tied to GOP megadonor and billionaire Peter Thiel.

“What they’re trying to do is tap into white working-class cultural and social signifiers, while doing as little as possible to actually reduce incomes at the top and actually redistribute them down. It’s a delicate game they play,” said Matt Bruenig, co-founder of the People’s Policy Project, which advances left-wing policies. “Obviously, it’s going to miss the welfare state, it’s going to miss tax-based redistribution — these things that are essential to creating an egalitarian society.”

The shifts from traditional GOP rhetoric are clear on some issues, though.

In March 2017, Vance said he found “the Democratic Party is actually the rational party when it comes to housing policy.”

In February 2020, Vance criticized “right-to-work” policies, favored by conservatives, that sharply curtail the ability of unions to organize.

In April 2021, after corporate leaders discussed how to respond to GOP changes in state voting laws, Vance said on the social media site then known as Twitter: “Raise their taxes and do whatever else is necessary to fight these goons. We can have an American Republic or a global oligarchy, and it’s time for choosing.”

Last year, Vance criticized GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s proposals to reform Social Security, which Vance characterized as an attempt to “cut Social Security so she can send more cash to Ukraine.”

Though he worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, Vance’s rhetoric about the “financialization” of the U.S. economy has been particularly striking for a Republican.

“Our economy is based on consumption, debt, financialization, and sloth,” he wrote in 2020 for the American Mind. “For two decades, while America has consumed much and made little, there has been no better industry than moving fake currency from one location to another.”

Vance has joined with Rubio and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) to call for government intervention to revitalize the U.S. defense industrial base. Asked about Trump’s plan to impose 10 percent tariffs on all imports, a measure even many Republicans fear would prove disruptive to the global economy, Vance defended “broad based tariffs” and said: “We need to protect American industries from all of the competition.”

Saurabh Sharma, president of American Moment, a Trump-aligned conservative group focused on training congressional and presidential staffers, also pointed to Vance’s stances on immigration and foreign policy. Vance has strongly criticized U.S. aid to Ukraine, in opposition to more traditional Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and argued for a tougher crackdown on immigrants than even most GOP lawmakers support.

“Senator Vance took the revolution in economic orthodoxy President Trump brought to the party,” Sharma said, “and became its foremost champion in the Senate.”