Big donors, wealthy Wall Street brokers and conservative neo-conservatives are outraged at former President Donald Trump’s choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate in this year’s presidential election, similar to how those same elites were infuriated by Trump’s candidacy in 2016.
Working-class Republicans support Vance, a populist nationalist best known for his best-selling memoir. Hillbilly Elegy As he talks about his childhood in the Rust Belt in the midst of a globalization that is destroying communities, economic elites are raising objections in the mainstream media.
“Wall Street will be begging for Lina Khan (Biden’s biggest trustbuster at the FTC) to return after two months of the Trump/Vance administration,” one Wall Street broker said. Said of Financial TimesVance cites Lina Khan, who advocates for breaking up corporate monopolies, as his supporter.
Matt Stoller is an anti-monopoly advocate who writes the Substack newsletter. biganalyzed the risks Vance poses within the Republican Party by shifting it toward a larger populist wing.
In the mid-2010s, Vance, a former venture capitalist, reevaluated his views and ultimately turned to populism, taking more proactive stances on the economy, immigration, and foreign policy. While it is tempting to see this shift as merely opportunistic, Vance has taken political risks that go beyond mere careerism. Indeed, four months ago, he told a crowd that Lina Khan was “one of the few people in the Biden administration who is doing a pretty good job.” In the Republican Party, those are combative words. [Emphasis added]
The most striking difference about Vance is a simple one: his age. He is younger. Both he and Khan are in their 30s and grew up through a series of disastrous policies in the 2000s and 2010s.It’s not the prosperity of the 1990s, nor is it the optimistic view of Big Tech that is held primarily by people who came of age in that decade and have some understanding of Google as a disruptive startup and Mark Zuckerberg as a child. To Vance and Khan, Google and Facebook are simply on the side of the establishment. [Emphasis added]
Other Wall Street Types Who spoke? To Financial Times They said they were effectively panicking at the possibility of an economic nationalist policy led by Vance in a future Trump administration.
“We are very concerned that J.D. Vance will play an exaggerated role in the Trump administration,” a lobbyist for a major bank said.“Trump’s populism and Vance’s populism are not the same.” [Emphasis added]
“He embodies the populist mindset, is clearly smart and is the future of the party,” said another financial services lobbyist.described Vance as an “intellectual giant.” [Emphasis added]
“He represents something about the country that coastal elites and big business have long failed to recognize,” the lobbyist added.This clearly points to Vance’s ability to channel working-class anger and disenfranchisement. [Emphasis added]
On immigration and trade issues, Vance is most at odds with Wall Street brokers and big business groups like the Chamber of Commerce. Unlike his Republican counterparts, Vance supports reducing immigration, tightening the labor market and promoting an economy that favors American workers over employers.
Similarly, on trade, Vance blasted the job-killing free trade agreements that have dominated Washington, DC, for the past 30 years, which have made multinational corporations richer than ever by allowing them to outsource working- and middle-class jobs to the world’s lowest-wage countries.
At Semaphore, big companies form alliances Said “CEOs are shocked” that Vance was named as Trump’s running mate, even though his name had been floated as a leading candidate for months.
Oren Cass of American Compass told Semaphore why Trump chose Vance:
Senator Vance has been at the forefront of criticizing what’s wrong with globalization, what’s wrong with financialization, what’s wrong with the pursuit of cheap labor and rising stock prices.The very fact that he chose Vance suggests that Trump currently feels no benevolence or even loyalty to Wall Street. [Emphasis added]
The Republican Party’s wealthiest donors, who have often opposed Trump’s “America First” policies, lobbied behind the scenes against Vance in hopes of electing a more establishment candidate like Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina).
POLITICO report:
But opposition to Mr. Vance from the donor community posed a challenge in the lesser-known vice presidential race, where other candidates, including Mr. Burgum, Mr. Rubio and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, had deep ties to mainstream donors who were eager to outdo Mr. Vance. Republican megadonor Ken Griffin’s team told Trump he didn’t want the Ohio senator for office, and former News Corp. CEO Murdoch echoed Trump’s lead and said he would back another candidate. Burgum is one of them: The Murdoch-owned New York Post and The Wall Street Journal ran separate editorials recommending him for the post. [Emphasis added]
Vance was pictured here after his fiery, populist speech at the Republican National Convention this week, in which he declared, “No more pandering to Wall Street.” Circulated Billionaire Rupert Murdoch and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), a darling of the donor base, sit solemnly in one of the arena’s suites.
Other neocons have deep financial ties to military contractors who enrich themselves with hawkish foreign policy. Said Politico reports that Vance is “scared to death” of becoming vice president because of his opposition to unlimited spending in Ukraine and foreign interventionism.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter. here.
