Why JD Vance as Trump’s Vice President Scares Business Leaders

TTwo weeks ago, we wrote that business leaders are not flocking to Republican Party presidential leader Donald Trumpwith no Fortune 100 CEO having donated financially to Trump this year – a pattern only now broken by Elon Musk’s statement Monday. While we have seen a wave of statements of sympathy from business leaders in the hours following this weekend’s despicable and horrific assassination attempt on Trump, Trump’s selection of freshman Ohio Senator J.D. Vance once again emphasizes the vast gulf that separates Trump from the business community, and reflects Trump’s most blatant anti-capitalist instincts.

JD Vance certainly wasn’t the business community’s favorite to be Trump’s vice president, by far. Even several Republican CEOs I spoke with are disappointed with Vance’s pick, and all of them would have strongly preferred any alternative, especially candidates like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who are sidelined by the groups. more traditional pro-business. GOP Cloth. O Wall Street Journal just condemned the socially Vance’s divisive nomination as “curious,” explaining: “He opposes the free-market policies that Mr. Trump will need for economic renewal…. We suspect the White House is relieved he did not choose a more experienced and reassuring political figure.” Some major donors, such as Ken Griffin and Rupert Murdoch, even supposedly released a last-second blitzkrieg stops Vance in desperation. The only donors who have stood by Vance are a small, insular circle of Silicon Valley personalities.

It’s clear that business leaders are not enthusiastic about Biden, and many of them consider especially questionable the Biden administration’s tough antitrust enforcement, led by FTC Chair Lina Khan – but it is these exact same anti-business parts of the Biden agenda that JD Vance wants to double down on. In February of this year, at a Bloomberg conference, Vance declared: “A lot of my Republican colleagues look at Lina Khan and say, ‘Well, Lina Khan is kind of involved in some kind of fundamental evil thing.’ And I see Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration who I think is doing a good job.” Vance recently joined forces with fellow progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren for present bills ranging from “Law to stop subsidizing giant mergers” to efforts to break big banks.

See more information: Why Trump chose JD Vance

This marriage of the extreme right and the extreme left scares CEOs, who are not isolationists, protectionists or xenophobes, and do not like regulatory excesses. Antitrust is just the tip of the iceberg; The economic policy positions expressed by Vance, which far exceed traditional Republican positions, are ringing alarm bells in corporate boardrooms across the country.

Many of Vance’s economic policy positions amount to an American attitude CEO’s Worst Nightmare; a hodgepodge of populist promises that will expand the government’s reach into the economy, undermine global confidence and subvert free markets.

In particular, business voices expressed concern about Vance’s repeated support for protective tariffs, an echo of Trump’s own calls for 10% tariffs on everything coming into the US from any country. Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists warned that inflation would be boosted by up to 10% by some estimates if these tariffs are enacted.

In some areas, Vance’s views are much more radical than Trump’s. Vance has previously supported higher taxes on businesses, defending “no more subsidies to the anti-American business class” and declaring “It’s time for America to wage war on corporations.” Likewise, Vance is excited about devaluing the dollar; His claims that the devaluation is not as scary as it seems do not sit well with business leaders, who depend on the strength of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency to reach vast global markets.

For many business leaders, knowing Vance is not loving him.

Vance’s first boss, Steve Case, has ran to get away of Vance, while Vance’s other early boss, Peter Thiel, promised not to donate a single cent for Trump this year. Another of Vance’s early mentors, Mitt Romney, once meditated“I don’t know if I can disrespect anyone more than JD Vance… How do you sit next to him at lunch?”

See more information: “This is bad”: Ukrainians fear what JD Vance could do as vice president

The CEOs are not isolationists and were alarmed by Vance’s disdain for the Ukraine situation and the EU’s fears, which he expressed in Munich Security Conference in March, stating, “I really don’t care what happens to Ukraine.” More than 1,200 major Western companies have withdrawn from Russia due to Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, which threatened sovereign stability and the rule of law.

President Joe Biden reacted to Vance’s selection by calling him a Trump “clone,” but for many in the business world, Vance may be worse than a Trump clone — he is Trump’s identity, drawing out all of Trump’s most instinctive instincts. anti-Trump business without any of Trump’s negotiating instincts. The biggest beneficiary could be Biden, who should celebrate Vance’s selection as proof that the self-destructive version of Trump is resurfacing on the campaign trail.