Trump’s Pick of JD Vance Unsettles Republican Business Elite, Delights Populists

The first-term senator has taken a more active role in government intervention in the economy than most Republicans, becoming the leader of a minority caucus of GOP senators that also includes Sens. Josh Hawley (D-Missouri) and Marco Rubio (Florida). Vance has praised President Biden’s antitrust crusade at the Federal Trade Commission, called for a higher minimum wage and even once called for higher taxes on corporations — positions that are anathema to conservatives. The departure is especially stark when compared with Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, who has described himself as a Ronald Reagan supporter, embodying GOP orthodoxy on everything from deficits to taxes, or former House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, another GOP vice presidential candidate known for his free-market orthodoxy.

“It’s clear to most party leaders that the future is going to be a Vances, Hawleys and Rubios — having one of them on the ticket is a very significant indicator or, in some ways, confirmation of where the Republican Party is headed on key economic issues,” said Oren Cass, a Vance ally and president of American Compass, a think tank with close ties to GOP economic populists. “Vance is laying out a very clear picture of the failure of what he calls the GOP’s ‘market fundamentalism’ — the consensus economic policies of the last few decades.”

Vance’s predecessor, former Senator Rob Portman (Republican of Ohio), was also seen as close to traditional GOP policymakers.

“The emergence of Trump has caused the populist, aggressive side of the GOP to split from it on economics, and Vance is one of the leaders of that populist group,” said Brian Riedl, who was Portman’s assistant 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 been pushing hard to support this new populist economics in the GOP.”

Vance’s rise has angered some GOP elites: Many major party donors have opposed the pick, including Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire chairman of the hedge fund Citadel, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on 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 consideration of the president and his team.”

Pence is now affiliated with a conservative think tank that works to counter the influence of Vance and his allies on economic policy. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has also opposed Vance, supporting 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 condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. (Murdoch’s preference for Burgum and opposition to Vance was first reported by NOTUS.)

Alarm about Vance’s ties 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 official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share his views. Vance said earlier this year that Khan was “doing a pretty good job,” citing the FTC’s crackdown on tech giants.

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

Despite differences, Vance is now one of the leaders of a party that is deeply committed to many of the principles of traditional free-market ideology. Deregulating businesses, cutting taxes, reducing federal spending on social programs, limiting the power of the U.S. government — all of these issues are key priorities not only for the Republican Party as a whole but for Trump in particular.

Trump, for example, has called for an extension of the 2017 GOP tax bill, which significantly cut corporate and estate taxes and was roundly criticized as a handout to the wealthy. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that middle-income taxpayers would save an average of $900 under the bill in 2025, compared with an estimated $61,000 saved by the average taxpayer in the top 1% of earners that year.

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

“He’s a supporter of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts and Donald Trump’s tax cuts — he’s made that clear every time he’s spoken on the subject,” Norquist said. “People sometimes point to him because he’s done something like, ‘I’m from Appalachia,’ as if that means he’s open to populist policies.”

Democrats also say the division represented by the new GOP vanguard is overstated. Vance may nod in a more populist direction, but he is likely to go along with Trump’s agenda, which is strongly favored by big business groups, they say. Vance has not yet endorsed anywhere near the scale of government intervention Democrats is necessary to address the multiple crises facing families — child care, health care, housing and more. Vance has opposed Biden’s inflation-reduction bill, which would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in clean-energy subsidies to boost domestic manufacturing. Some top donors may balk at his promotion, but Vance has long been associated with GOP megadonor and billionaire Peter Thiel.

“They’re trying to use cultural and social symbols of the white working class while doing as little as possible to actually reduce income at the top and actually redistribute it down. It’s a delicate game they’re playing,” said Matt Bruenig, co-founder of the People’s Policy Project, which promotes leftist policies. “Of course, there’s going to be no welfare state, no tax-based redistribution — those things that are necessary to create an egalitarian society.”

On some issues, however, there has been a clear departure from traditional Republican Party rhetoric.

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

In February 2020, Vance criticized “right to work” policies backed by conservatives that drastically restrict the ability of unions to organize.

In April 2021, after corporate leaders discussed how to respond to GOP changes to state voting laws, Vance said on the social media site then known as Twitter: “Raise their taxes and do whatever it takes to fight these thugs. We can have an American republic or a global oligarchy, and the time has come to choose.”

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

Even though Vance worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, his rhetoric about the “financialization” of the U.S. economy was particularly striking to the Republican.

“Our economy is built on consumption, debt, financialization, and laziness,” he wrote for American Mind in 2020. “For two decades, while America consumed a lot and earned little, there was no better industry than moving counterfeit currency from one place to another.”

Vance joined Rubio and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) in calling for government intervention to revive the U.S. defense industrial base. Asked about Trump’s plan to impose 10 percent tariffs on all imports, which even many Republicans fear would be destructive to the global economy, Vance defended “broad-based tariffs” and said, “We have to protect American industry from all competition.”

Saurabh Sharma, president of American Moment, a conservative pro-Trump group that focuses on training congressional staffers and the president, also noted Vance’s stances on immigration and foreign policy. Vance has been a sharp critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine, in opposition to more traditional Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and has argued for tougher crackdowns on immigrants than most GOP lawmakers support.

“Senator Vance has taken the revolution in economic orthodoxy that President Trump brought to the party,” Sharma said, “and has become its chief defender in the Senate.”