An uncomfortable exchange in the Oval Office on October 20 put an open question for the political right on display. With Vice President JD Vance standing behind him, President Donald Trump was asked whether he would back Vance for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028. Trump said it was too soon to talk about the race.
He didn’t suggest his reluctance had anything to do with economic policy. Even so, the moment raises a broader question: what kind of conservatism would Vance bring to the presidency?
Vance has shown limited enthusiasm for free-market ideas. He has criticized economist Milton Friedman, expressed sympathy for some positions associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, and supported raising the minimum wage. His economic views differ from the market-oriented approach that once held sway in the Republican Party.
That difference is also apparent in his association with the National Conservatism movement, or “Natcons,” which favors government action to promote traditional values and ways of life. Its supporters have called for a national industrial policy, public subsidies for selected industries, and taxpayer incentives for people to have children.
Trump’s own economic record is hardly a model of free-market orthodoxy. But he often argues that he is trying to undo government policies that have left the economy “rigged.” I agree that the system is deeply distorted, and that government helped make it that way.
Vance and other national conservatives, though, seem more willing to trust government with directing economic and social life. Socialists put even greater faith in government management, of course. Still, the founders understood the danger of concentrating power, even when it is used in the name of good intentions.
The United States was designed to limit government, not simply to put it to different uses. The structure of the country reflects that idea. A policy or institution created by one administration can be turned toward very different ends by the next.
The founders’ answer was to divide power both across the federal branches and between the federal government, the states, and the people. The latter arrangement is federalism. Subsidiarity is a related, broader principle: decisions should generally be made by the smallest social unit capable of addressing the problem.
That principle matters in a free society because institutions have different strengths and limits. Federal welfare programs, for instance, have sometimes discouraged marriage and family formation, while in some cases supporting childbirth outside marriage. A government far removed from people’s daily lives cannot realistically tailor its decisions to the needs of tens of millions of households.
State policies have also affected marriage. California introduced no-fault divorce in 1969, and other states followed. Critics argue that these laws weakened the state’s role in upholding valid agreements and protecting spouses from abandonment. Census Bureau figures indicate that nearly one-third of Americans born from 1988 to 1993 experienced their parents’ divorce before turning 18, with divorce more common among children in lower-income families.
The consequences can be severe. Census researchers found that, compared with children whose parents divorced after they reached adulthood, those who experienced divorce in early childhood had higher rates of teenage births and incarceration, a greater risk of dying by age 25, and lower adult incomes.
This is part of why “nanny state” is such a pointed criticism. Raising children and sustaining families are responsibilities for parents, relatives, churches, and communities. Government’s role, in my view, should be narrower: protect people from force and fraud, uphold valid contracts, and provide public works that are genuinely necessary. Even those tasks can be difficult for government to manage well.
A sweeping national industrial policy is no more likely to deliver on its promises. It could add to the country’s existing problem with cronyism, giving large multinational corporations another way to use government power against competitors, including smaller American firms.
The more reliable path to creating productive jobs and improving wages is to remove unnecessary barriers. When people are free to work, invest, and benefit from what they produce, resources can move toward their most useful purposes. That, rather than political direction, is what supports a country’s economic strength.
Across all levels of government, laws have contributed to the weakening of families, religious communities, and other institutions that Vance and national conservatives say they want to rebuild. But the scale of the government programs they propose would make them difficult to administer and vulnerable to capture by powerful interests.
National Conservatism’s own principles endorse federalism and describe a strong but limited state. The real dispute is how much power government should have in pursuing those aims. I think the interventions its supporters favor risk undermining the very freedoms they hope to preserve.
Subsidiarity offers another route. It rests on respect for individual rights, limits on government authority, freedom of association and enterprise, and the different abilities and character that people can develop when they are free. That approach, I believe, is a better way to pursue the national conservatives’ goal of restoring traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties.
Subsidiarity has a long history in Catholic political thought, and Catholics are a notable part of the National Conservatism movement. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, and his allies might find that a closer look at this principle in their own tradition would help their efforts to build a fairer economy, stronger families, and more effective government.
If Vance and other national conservatives want to strengthen families, churches, small businesses, and similar institutions, they should work with advocates of liberty to keep government power as distant from those institutions as possible.
