Trump's “populist” running mate won’t shift his party’s loyalty to the working class.
Many see Donald Trump’s pick of J.D. Vance as a sign of a new era of Republican economic populism.
So far, Trumpism’s exact ideological lines have been blurred, with Trump shifting between populist ideas and conservative norms — one day pushing for price controls on pharmaceutical companies, the next slashing taxes for the wealthy and cutting Medicaid.
Vance stands out among Republicans for attempting to craft a coherent agenda from Trump’s populist tendencies, one that worries business elites and excites “pro-worker” conservatives.
With Trump being 78 and ineligible for a third term, Vance is positioned to potentially lead the GOP in the future, a prospect his populist supporters believe could turn the GOP into a worker’s party.
However, Vance’s commitment to changing the Republican Party’s class allegiances and his ability to do so are both overstated.
Vance’s economic stance is different from the market fundamentalism of Ronald Reagan or Paul Ryan. Like Trump, he is critical of free trade and immigration, arguing that they weaken native-born workers’ bargaining power by providing cheap labor for corporations. He claims that if U.S. employers had to rely on a smaller labor pool, they would have to pay higher wages and invest in productivity-enhancing technology.
Vance also backs state subsidies for domestic production of advanced products. As a Senate candidate, he supported Joe Biden’s CHIPS Act, which subsidizes U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers. In Congress, he co-authored bipartisan legislation requiring companies that develop new technologies with taxpayer support to manufacture the resulting products in the U.S.
He has shown a willingness to challenge parts of the capitalist class. Alongside Elizabeth Warren, he co-sponsored a bill to reclaim pay from executives of large failed banks to deter reckless risk-taking. He has also voiced support for the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust measures.
Most controversially, Vance theoretically supports organized labor, though he is critical of the current trade union movement. He believes more American workers should be able to collectively bargain but argues that mainstream labor unions are “irreconcilably hostile to Republicans” and that left-wing unions like Starbucks Workers United should be opposed by conservatives.
Despite Vance’s rise in Republican politics, it is unlikely to turn the GOP into a true advocate for working-class interests. This is due to several reasons:
1. Broad Republican Support: Vance’s ideas on trade and immigration, while popular among Republicans, are more likely to lower the living standards of native-born Americans than to improve them.
2. Legislative Proposals: His legislative proposals for increased government intervention have limited support among Republicans and would only have a marginal impact on U.S. workers.
3. Organized Labor: The GOP is structurally incapable of supporting Vance’s radical ideas about organized labor, and Vance has done little to advance them.
4. Incentives: The GOP has little incentive to forsake the interests of its wealthiest and most organized constituencies to better serve working-class voters. The party has already found it can increase its support among blue-collar workers without making significant concessions to their material interests.
Vance’s Views on Trade and Immigration
Vance is an economic nationalist, advocating for significantly reducing immigration and protecting domestic goods producers with extensive tariffs, such as Trump’s proposed 10 percent duty on all foreign imports.
It’s unclear how many Republicans support such radical trade restrictions. Trump has managed to garner broad support within the GOP for certain protectionist and immigration restriction measures. However, this nationalism offers little tangible benefit to the average American worker.
Vance argues that free trade and extensive immigration reduce American workers’ bargaining power. If companies can access laborers from poorer countries with lower wage expectations, native-born Americans will struggle to compete unless they accept lower pay.
There are two main issues with this view. First, there is little evidence that immigration significantly harms native-born workers. Workers benefit from tight labor markets, but high levels of immigration can coexist with such markets. Immigrants expand both the labor supply and demand since they consume goods and services. The immigrant share of America’s labor force reached a record high in 2023, yet U.S. workers saw substantial wage increases and lower unemployment as labor demand outpaced supply.
While a sudden influx of less-skilled immigrants might temporarily reduce the bargaining power of similarly skilled native-born workers in some sectors, high levels of immigration generally benefit the native-born working class.
Studies have repeatedly tested the theory that immigrants drive down wages and employment opportunities for native-born workers, finding no significant adverse impact. Immigration has been shown to increase labor productivity, enabling greater labor specialization and efficiency. It also increases the ratio of prime-age workers to senior citizens, aiding in the sustainability of entitlements.
Tariffs benefit manufacturing workers at the expense of all other workers, and manufacturing comprises a small minority of the U.S. labor force. Less than 10 percent of American workers are in manufacturing. Therefore, tariffs decrease the purchasing power of the typical American worker without boosting their bargaining power. Given Americans’ sensitivity to rising prices, a 10 percent tax on all foreign-made goods would likely be unpopular.
Vance’s Populist Reforms
Some of Vance’s proposals are worthwhile but have limited support from Republicans and have not been enacted. These include plans for increasing railway safety regulations, punishing reckless bankers, and promoting domestic production of advanced technologies.
Vance supports sectoral bargaining, where all workers in an industry collectively bargain with employers over pay, benefits, and working conditions. This system would benefit workers by increasing their leverage over employers. However, Vance has not introduced legislation for sectoral bargaining and does not support existing bills to increase union power, such as the PRO Act.
Despite opposing right-to-work laws and showing support for striking workers, Vance has done little to support organized labor while in office. He voted with the AFL-CIO on none of its endorsed positions in 2023.
Expanding the welfare state could increase workers’ leverage by allowing them to leave exploitative employers, but Vance has shown little interest in growing the safety net. He opposes cutting Medicare or Social Security’s retirement benefits but has not proposed new social programs and opposes raising taxes.
The GOP’s Loyalty to Business Owners
Even if Vance’s pro-labor politics were genuine, the GOP is unlikely to adopt a pro-worker agenda. The Republican coalition has become more working-class over the past eight years, but this doesn’t mean the party’s agenda will become more pro-worker. Economically left-leaning Republican voters are not organized and do not fund institutions that monitor GOP lawmakers’ voting behavior.
Business owners, particularly anti-union ones, are the backbone of the institutional GOP. Once the Democratic Party aligned with organized labor, businesses that couldn’t tolerate unions moved to the GOP. Through industry lobbies and think tanks, anti-union businesses have built the foundations of the conservative movement.
During Trump’s first term, he enacted tax cuts for businesses and appointed a conservative National Labor Relations Board, which made it harder for workers to organize.
Business owners’ control of the GOP is most evident at the state level, where Republican lawmakers have advanced legislation rolling back basic worker protections. Lawmakers backing these bills are often business owners themselves.
Vance’s selection won’t change the class composition of the Republican Party’s political class or the interests of its most organized interest groups. Even if the Trump-Vance ticket expands the GOP’s blue-collar wing, it won’t reduce elected Republicans’ incentives to cater to low-road employers. If Trump shows that Republicans can win working-class votes with immigration restrictionism and populist gestures, they have little reason to offer significant material benefits to workers.
The GOP is unlikely to remake itself in Vance’s image. Vance has already shown a willingness to shift ideologically with the political winds, from a NeverTrump conservative to a champion of the January 6 rioters. The path of least resistance for a Republican in today’s GOP is to be a populist in rhetoric but a servant to business interests. Ambition will likely guide Vance in that direction, as evidenced by the support from anti-labor tech billionaires who propelled him to the vice presidential nomination.