“Vance\u2019s commitment, though, to flipping the Republican Party\u2019s class allegiances \u2014 and his prospects for doing so \u2014 have both been greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
J.D. Vance\u2019s economic outlook is distinct from the market fundamentalism of Ronald Reagan or Paul Ryan. Vance is skeptical of free trade and immigration, believing that both erode the bargaining power of native-born workers by providing corporations access to cheap labor at home and abroad. In his telling, were US employers forced to rely on a smaller labor pool, they would have no choice but to pay higher wages and invest more in productivity-enhancing technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vance also supports state subsidies for the domestic production of cutting-edge products. As a Senate candidate, Vance voiced support<\/a> for Joe Biden\u2019s CHIPS Act, which subsidizes semiconductor manufacturers who operate in the United States. Once in Congress, he co-authored bipartisan legislation<\/a> that would require companies that develop new technologies with taxpayer support to manufacture the resulting products within the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He has also been willing to antagonize discrete segments of the capitalist class. With Elizabeth Warren, he cosponsored<\/a> a bill that would claw back the pay of executives at large failed banks, a measure aimed at discouraging reckless risk-taking. And he has given rhetorical support<\/a> to the Biden administration\u2019s aggressive antitrust enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most heretically, Vance claims to support<\/a> organized labor in theory, even if he\u2019s less than enthusiastic about the trade union movement that actually exists. The senator has said that more American workers should be able to collectively bargain over pay and benefits but that the mainstream labor movement is \u201cirreconcilably hostile to Republicans<\/a>\u201d and that left-wing unions like Starbucks Workers United deserve conservatives\u2019 opposition<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, Vance\u2019s ascension to the highest echelon of Republican politics is unlikely to transform the GOP into an effective steward of working-class interests. This is true for (at least) four reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1) Where Vance\u2019s ideas have broad Republican buy-in \u2014 as on trade and immigration \u2014 his policy preferences would be more likely to reduce native-born Americans\u2019 living standards than increase them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2) Vance\u2019s concrete legislative proposals for increasing government intervention in the economy have tepid support from other Republicans and in any case would have only a marginal impact on US workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3) The Republican Party is structurally incapable of acting on Vance\u2019s genuinely radical ideas about organized labor and the Ohio senator has done absolutely nothing to advance them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4) The GOP has little incentive to betray the interests of its most well-heeled and organized constituencies for the sake of better serving working-class voters. After all, the party has already discovered that it can grow its support among blue-collar workers without making any significant concessions to their material interests.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n