J.D. Vance first caught the public’s attention with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, a populist howl about Appalachia that accuses elites of betraying the white working class. Since then, Vance has cultivated some of the wealthiest elites in tech and venture capital—including former Google chairman Eric Schmidt and the billionaire VC Peter Thiel—to help him win a U.S. Senate seat and, in July, the Republican nomination for vice president.
With Donald Trump’s ticket on the rise, observers in the business community may well wonder what approach Vance will bring if voters put him in the White House. Will it be a radical populist agenda? Or will Vance deliver on the priorities of his well-heeled friends in Silicon Valley? It’s too soon to say, of course. But based on his record, Vanceonomics seems indifferent or even hostile to the traditional business priorities—such as laissez-faire industrial policy and easy access to goods and labor—that have been the bedrock of the Republican Party’s platform for over a century.
In the ordinary course of things, there would be little interest in the views of the vice president—a position its first occupant, John Adams, described as the “most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived.” But 2024 is no ordinary election. Vance would be a proverbial heartbeat from the presidency under a chief executive who would turn 83 in the final year of his term. And Trump’s desire to cultivate a new generation of MAGA leaders suggests that he may give Vance a broad remit to pursue his own agenda—in part to set him up as his heir in 2028.
“This is one of those few times where, like Dick Cheney, the vice presidential beat will be worth covering,” says David Wessel, former economics editor at the Wall Street Journal, who now directs a fiscal policy center at the Brookings Institution.
Wessel believes that in the White House, Vance would be active in shaping domestic economic initiatives—particularly tariffs—to protect American manufacturing and steep limits on immigration. This would be consistent with the themes Vance invoked in his speech to the GOP convention in July, where he bashed Wall Street and vowed to revive Rust Belt factories. (In his home state of Ohio, Vance has joined UAW workers on the picket line.) Wessel’s prediction also jibes with the few pieces of legislation that Vance has sponsored during his brief Senate tenure—including an executive-compensation clawback provision he drafted with progressive Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), which captured headlines but didn’t become law.
Labor rights and restrictions on CEO pay are not exactly top priorities for venture capital donors like Thiel—who spotted Vance a whopping $15 million for his 2022 Senate campaign—and David Sacks. Still, those patrons were reportedly instrumental in persuading Trump to select him as a running mate. So what’s in it for the VCs?
The philosophical answer: a shared interest in an America-first economic nationalism. The glib answer: a lot of money. Many of the VCs supporting the Trump-Vance ticket—including the founders of Andreessen Horowitz—have major stakes in cryptocurrency. They likely assume Vance, who owns Bitcoin, will help push forward regulations that favor crypto. More broadly, VCs who back Trump have faulted the Biden administration’s antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech, which has slowed the M&A activity that gives venture firms many of their most profitable startup “exits.”
$165 million
Donations to federal candidates from the venture capital community in early phases of the 2023-24 election cycle.
Source: OpenSecrets. Note: Through 6/21/24; includes individual and PAC donations.
Vance might deliver more favorable regulation on the crypto front. He might disappoint on regulation, given his avowed fandom of Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair, the antitrust firebrand Lina Khan. But VCs and business leaders more broadly could pay a steep price in other areas of economic policy if the Republicans take the White House.
Richard M. Reinsch II, an editor at the American Institute for Economic Research and a self-described conservative, views Vance as a formidable thinker who is conversant with a wide range of ideas. But he is also concerned by Vance’s support for Khan and by his desire to prevent Japan’s Nippon Steel from buying a Cleveland steel mill. “I would characterize his economic approach as one that’s fully consistent with [1980s Democratic candidates] Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis—a pro-worker party based around a lot of government intervention and managing the economy,” says Reinsch.
Vanceonomics, in practice, could indeed have a major impact on the labor market. Like Trump, Vance has called for radical limits to immigration, which could make it harder for U.S. companies to hire both seasonal labor and highly skilled overseas workers. Meanwhile, Vance’s comments on the role of women in society could create an additional pinch when it comes to hiring. Specifically, his calls for a national abortion ban and for creating more incentives for parents to raise larger families represent a philosophy that could make it harder for women to stay in the workforce.
Many economists see this combination of protectionism and a smaller labor force as a formula for higher wages and inflation. (See "Bidenomics v. Trumponomics: What can business expect from the next president?") Those factors can become huge headaches for employers in the non-digital economy, but they’re the kinds of “externalities” that have less of an impact on the tech businesses overseen by Vance’s VC allies.
There is a major proviso that goes with any predictions about Vance’s potential economic influence: his age. Vance, who turns 40 on Aug. 2, would be the youngest vice president since Richard Nixon was elected alongside Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. His youth means Vance would be more likely to evolve in his thinking—on economic policy and everything else—than geriatric figures like Trump and Joe Biden. Business leaders trying to guess what Vance might do will have to wait; those nostalgic for traditional Republican business priorities, meanwhile, can worry.
“Let’s hope, as progressives used to say of conservatives, he grows into the office,” says Reinsch.
This article appears in the August/September issue of Fortune with the headline, "Vanceonomics: What Trump's VP pick could mean for business."
