J.D. Vance's Populist Anti-Corporate Record May Surprise You

The Ohio senator has blazed an unorthodox path as a Republican on fundamental economic and foreign policy issues.

Donald Trump revealed yesterday that Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio will be his running mate. The news elicited a mixed reaction across the ideological spectrum, with many pointing to Vance's fiery commentary on abortion, immigration and other hot-button issues as evidence that the GOP is eschewing any attempt to reach beyond America’s increasing partisan polarization. 

The New York Times’ editorial board discussed Vance as “extreme” and “combative and polarizing.” Mother Jones, a liberal outlet, wrote that Vance’s recent record showed that he ramped “up the divisive, MAGA-aligned rhetoric” to “curry Trump’s favor.”

That may be so, but the reporting on the Vance selection has largely failed to account for the heterodox nature of Vance’s actual Senate record. Since his election in 2022, the junior senator from Ohio has blazed an unorthodox path as a Republican on fundamental economic and foreign policy issues.

Far from a partisan warrior, Vance has praised the most populist economic figures in the Biden administration, including Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair who has led a push against Silicon Valley monopolies and private equity abuses. Vance has also said that Jared Bernstein, the head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, known as an outspoken proponent of labor unions and middle class policies, is “one of the best people we could have gotten.” He has spoken highly of the Biden administration’s efforts to bring back semiconductor manufacturing, though he is sharply critical of the set-asides for diversity in the program.

Vance works well with a diverse set of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He frequently cosponsors corporate accountability legislation with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. “We actually want to make change,” Warren told Politico, remarking on her work with Vance to prevent executives from bailed-out banks from reaping huge bonuses. 

His record shows a relatively high degree of cooperation with Senate Democrats, particularly on populist issues for enhancing oversight over corporations:

– Vance cosponsored legislation with Sen. Raphael Warnock, Warren, and Sanders to cap out-of-pocket expenses for insulin at $35 or 25% of a plan's negotiated price for Americans insured with private health insurance.

– Vance and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse introduced legislation that reshapes decades of corporate tax law, forcing corporate mergers of firms beyond $500 million in revenue to immediately pay capital gains taxes on shares earned through such deals.

– Vance cosponsored legislation with Sen. Dick Durbin to require price transparency and Medicare coverage status on certain pharmaceutical advertisements.

– Vance has worked with Sen. Sherrod Brown on legislation to tighten inspection requirements and hike penalties for rail cars carrying chemicals in response to the Norfolk Southern derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio last year.

-- Vance cosponsored Sen. Tim Kaine's legislation to repeal the authorization of the use of military force in Iraq.

— Vance and Sen. Tammy Baldwin sponsored legislation to prevent the licensing of government-funded advanced technology to foreign corporations. The bill was sponsored in light of revelations that specialized battery technology developed had been licensed to a Chinese firm.

In many ways, he is the most pro-worker, anti-war running mate of any Republican of the modern era. Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Dick Cheney and Jack Kemp were pro-corporate fundamentalists who favored privatization schemes and unfettered free trade. They sought an expanded role for America’s military in conflicts around the world, especially across the Middle East.

In contrast, Vance was one of the first modern Republicans to walk the picket lines in support of the United Autoworker Union strike for higher wages and benefits last year. He has repeatedly savaged the neoconservatism establishment, claiming that they have entrenched America in unwinnable “forever wars” that serve no strategic interest for the country.

Vance’s calls for peace negotiations with Ukraine place Vance far from the center of the D.C. establishment and closer to the fringes of both parties. Over the last two years, it has only been the House Progressive Caucus and House Freedom Caucus, along with a few mavericks in the Senate, such as Vance, who have openly demanded talks with Russia to end the war. 

Speaking to American Compass last year, Vance explained his belief that market forces have failed the American family and that policymakers should consider tax penalties for corporations that ship jobs overseas and subsidies for businesses that restore the nation’s manufacturing base.

During the discussion, Vance scorned the market-based incentives that drive the nation's best neuroscientists to seek lucrative jobs making "highly addictive predictive algorithms for Facebook" rather than helping to produce a cure for Alzheimer's, and the best mathematicians to work for quantitative hedge funds rather than developing next-generation fission energy.

"The traditional free market response to this is, 'well, clearly this is what people value more if they're willing to pay three times as much," noted Vance. Instead, he said he favors more economic intervention, an "industrial policy” that recognizes “where we need to direct our country's resources to solving real problems."

Some Vance critics argue that his worker and consumer-friendly Senate record is mere posturing. He embraced these positions, they say, only to prepare himself for a role in national politics, and he does not actually have a desire to help the American labor force or cut back on corporate excesses.

However, some of his antimonopolist overtures have been beyond the limelight and carefully crafted to impact power. Earlier this year, he filed an amicus brief into an Ohio case to classify Google as a common carrier utility. This designation would open the company up to much more stringent regulations and penalties over free speech concerns.

Other critics of the Ohio senator also say he is an opportunist because he was once a Trump opponent before evolving into a staunch ally of the former president.

But those close to the senator say that his upbringing in rural poverty and his experience after joining the U.S. Marines after high school profoundly shaped his views as a policymaker.

“I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to — that the promises of the foreign policy establishment were a complete joke,” Vance has said about his time serving during the war. 

In a talk for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft just two months ago, Vance laid out his intertwined worldview on foreign policy and the economy.

In the Senate, he said he has heard the same tired slogans justifying the escalation of the Ukraine war, positioning it as a conflict about democracy versus tyranny, the same arguments that were made for the Middle East wars of the War on Terror era.

The arguments, he said, fail to justify how the conflict serves American interests. The notions about spreading democracy and freedom in Iraq failed to account for the widespread ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region and the strengthening of Iran, dynamics that occurred as a result of the U.S. invasion. Thousands died only for a war that only weakened America’s strategic interests in the region.

"I do not think it is in America's interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine,” said Vance. During the speech, he also argued that the old thinking of the party came from its leadership, calling out Sen. Mitch McConnell, who he said has been wrong about “nearly every foreign position he's held" since his election in 1984, the year of Vance's birth.