Former President Donald Trump’s recent choice of Senator JD Vance (R-OH) as his Vice Presidential running mate has caused a stir among wealthy Wall Street brokers, big business groups and old guard neoconservatives – similar to the reactions in 2016 when these same elites were upset about Trump’s candidacy.
Despite the GOP’s working class base welcoming Vance, known for his best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”, detailing his childhood in the Rust Belt amid globalization that gutted communities, economic elites are taking to mainstream media outlets to express their opposition.
A Wall Street broker told the Financial Times, “Wall Street will be begging for the return of Lina Khan (Biden’s top trust buster at the Federal Trade Commission) after two months of the Trump/Vance administration,” referencing Vance’s support for Khan due to her stance on breaking up corporate monopolies.
Matt Stoller, an anti-monopolist who writes a Substack newsletter called BIG, points out that while Vance was previously a venture capitalist in the mid-2010s, he transitioned into populism with aggressive stances on economics, immigration and foreign policy. These risks within the GOP indicate a shift towards a more populist big tent party under Vance’s influence.
Another Wall Street broker told the Financial Times that they are effectively panicking over the prospect of an economic nationalist agenda led by Vance in a future Trump administration. We are very concerned about JD Vance playing an outsized role in a Trump administration,” said one big bank lobbyist. Trump populism and Vance populism are not the same.
Vance is most at odds with Wall Street brokers and big business groups like the Chamber of Commerce on issues of immigration and trade. Unlike the Republican Party’s old guard, Vance backs a tight labor market with reduced immigration levels where the economy is tilted in favor of American employees over employers. On trade, Vance has criticized the job-killing free trade consensus that has dominated Washington DC for decades – benefiting multinational corporations by allowing them to outsource jobs to the cheapest countries worldwide.
The GOP’s wealthiest donors, who have often disapproved of Trump’s America First agenda, lobbied behind the scenes against Vance in hopes of a more establishment-friendly pick like Senator Tim Scott (R-SC. Republican megadonor Ken Griffin’s team conveyed to Trump that they didn’t want the Ohio senator. Similarly, media mogul Rupert Murdoch was also weighing in with Trump and making it clear he supported other prospects, including Burgum. The Murdoch family-owned New York Post and Wall Street Journal published separate editorials endorsing Burgum for the position.
Other neoconservatives, with deep financial ties to military contractors that rely on hawkish foreign policy stances for profitability, told Politico they are “scared to death” of Vance as Vice President due to his opposition to unlimited spending in Ukraine and support for less foreign interventionism.