The first-term senator has embraced a more active role in government intervention in the economy than most Republicans, emerging as the 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 crusaders at the Federal Trade Commission, called for a higher minimum wage and even called for tax increases on corporations — positions that conservatives have condemned. His departure stands out in comparison to Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, who branded himself as a Ronald Reaganite by embodying GOP orthodoxy on everything from the deficit 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 party leaders that the future belongs to Vance, Hawley and Rubio — having any of them on the presidential ticket is a very important marker, or in some ways validation, 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 closely aligned with economic populists in the GOP. “Vance articulates a very clear perspective on the failure of what he would call the GOP’s ‘market fundamentalism’ — the consensus economic policy of the past several decades.”
Vance’s predecessor, former Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), was also seen as a close ally of the party’s traditional GOP policymakers.
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“The rise of Trump has caused the populist, aggressive side of the GOP to split on the economy, and Vance is one of the leaders of that populist caucus,” said Brian Riedl, a former Portman aide and now at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “Trump is much more populist on the economy, anti-free trade than traditional Republicans, and Vance has gone out of his way to support this new populist economy in the GOP.”
Vance’s promotion has irked some GOP elites: Many of the party’s top donors opposed the choice, including Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire president of the hedge fund Citadel, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. In a statement, Griffin said Trump had “many excellent choices for Vice President, and I appreciate the thoughtful consideration of the President and his team.”
Pence is now tied to conservative think tanks that are seeking to counter the influence of Vance and his allies on economic policy. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has also turned against Vance, pushing for North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who holds more traditional Republican economic views, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. (Murdoch’s preference for Burgum and his opposition to Vance were first reported by NOTUS.)
Concerns about Vance’s ties to Cass’ American Compass group and his support for FTC Chair Lina Khan have spread among business executives and top donors, said one senior business figure, who spoke on condition of anonymity to give his candid opinion. Vance said earlier this year that Khan “did a pretty good job,” citing the FTC’s crackdown on big tech companies.
“He has a lot of unconventional views on the economy that are at odds with a lot of things that conservative Republicans have stood for,” a GOP strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations, said in an interview before the pick was announced. “Major donors and business leaders are going to be disappointed if he’s picked as vice president.”
Nevertheless The difference is that Vance is now one of the party’s most committed leaders to many of the tenets of traditional free-market ideology. Deregulation of business, tax cuts, reductions in federal spending on social programs, limitations on the power of the U.S. government — all are top priorities not just for the GOP as a whole but for Trump in particular.
Trump, for example, has called for an extension of the 2017 GOP tax law, which drastically reduced corporate and estate taxes and was heavily criticized as a giveaway to the wealthy. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that middle-income taxpayers would save an average of $900 from the law in 2025, compared with 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 for lower taxes, said Vance has signed his organization’s pledge not to support tax increases.
“He’s a supporter of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts and Donald Trump’s — he always makes that clear whenever he speaks on the issue,” Norquist said. “People sometimes point to him because he says, ‘I’m from Appalachia,’ as if that means he’s open to populist politics.”
Democrats also say the changes represented by the new GOP frontrunner are overblown. Vance may nod in a more populist direction, but he will likely fall in line with Trump’s agenda, which is widely favored by big business, they say. Vance has not supported government intervention on a scale approaching that of the Democrats. Vance said it is needed to address the multiple crises facing families — child care, health care, housing and more. Vance opposes Biden’s Reducing Inflation Act, which allocates hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies to revive domestic manufacturing. Some major donors may oppose his rise, but Vance has long been associated with GOP megadonor and billionaire Peter Thiel.
“What they’re trying to do is capitalize on the cultural and social markers 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 complicated game that they’re playing,” said Matt Bruenig, co-founder of the People’s Policy Project, which advances left-wing policy. “Obviously, they’re going to ignore the welfare state, they’re going to ignore tax-based redistribution — things that are essential to creating an egalitarian society.”
However, the shift from traditional GOP rhetoric is evident on several issues.
In March 2017, Vance said that he found “the Democratic Party to be actually a rational party when it comes to housing policy.”
In February 2020, Vance criticized “right to work” policies, supported by conservatives, that sharply limit unions’ ability 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 criminals. We can have an American Republic or a global oligarchy, and it’s time to choose.”
Raise their taxes and do whatever it takes to fight these criminals. We can choose the American Republic or the global oligarchy, and now is the time to choose. https://t.co/WYFEYpiTyz
—JD Vance (@JDVance1) April 12, 2021
Last year, Vance criticized Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s proposal to reform Social Security, which Vance described as an attempt to “cut Social Security so he could send more cash to Ukraine.”
Although he works as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, Vance’s rhetoric about the “financialization” of the US economy is striking for a Republican.
“Our economy is based on consumption, debt, financialization, and laziness,” he wrote in 2020 for American Mind. “For two decades, while America has consumed a lot and produced a little, no industry has been better at it than moving counterfeit currency from one location to another.”
Vance has joined Rubio and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) in calling for government intervention to revive the U.S. defense industrial base. When asked about Trump’s plan to impose a 10 percent tariff on all imports, a move that even many Republicans worry would prove disruptive to the global economy, Vance defended “broad-based tariffs” and said: “We need to protect American industry from all competition.”
Saurabh Sharma, president of American Moment, a conservative Trump-aligned group that focuses on training congressional and presidential staff, also highlighted Vance’s stance on immigration and foreign policy. Vance has been a vocal critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine, at odds with more traditional Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and has argued that the crackdown on immigrants should be tougher than most GOP lawmakers support.
“Senator Vance brought the economic orthodoxy revolution that President Trump brought to the party,” Sharma said, “and became its leading advocate in the Senate.”
