This is an election year, and political uncertainty is a top concern for businesses.
Together news With presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday selecting former lawyer and venture capitalist Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, the potential impact of a Republican bid for the presidency in 2024 on the business and regulatory sectors has become a top concern for companies.
That’s because Senator Vance, who has positive views of both the cryptocurrency industry and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, is seen as a maverick who deviates from traditional Republican economic views.
The 39-year-old vice president candidate worked at Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management and founded Nalia Capital, a $93 million venture fund backed by Silicon Valley luminaries including Thiel, Eric Schmidt and Marc Andreessen. He has been notable for expressing concerns about incumbent tech giants having too much influence in politics and business operations.
“It’s time to break up Google,” Vance said. Tweeted He made similar comments on X in February of this year. He has made similar comments about Meta, suggesting that the parent companies of Facebook and other popular social platforms should be “broken up.”
Vance’s relatively aggressive stance on antitrust enforcement has put him at odds with many in his own party and comes at a time when big tech companies are facing increasing antitrust and regulatory scrutiny around the world.
Vance broke from more traditional Republican circles earlier this year when he called FTC Chairman Khan “doing a pretty good job” and “the best person” in the Biden administration. He also stressed that his views on antitrust law go beyond supporting small business competition to prioritizing workers and the quality of consumer goods.
Representatives for the vice presidential nominee did not immediately respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
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Vance’s political rise, whose 2022 Senate run has been backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, has been cheered by his former Silicon Valley colleagues. “We have a former tech VC in the White House. Greatest Country on Earth,” Founders Fund partner Delian Asparoukhov tweeted on X after Vance was nominated as vice presidential candidate.
Still, Vance’s unconventional approach to antitrust, particularly as it relates to big tech companies, reflects a growing tension between Conservatives’ urge to ease the influence and power of regulators and their willingness to use antitrust law to challenge powerful incumbents.
Vance currently serves on three Senate committees: the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and the Senate Select Committee on Aging.
As recently as March of this year, Vice Presidential candidate and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced the bipartisan “End Subsidies for Megamergers Act,” which would eliminate the tax exemption for mergers and acquisitions involving companies with combined annual revenues averaging more than $500 million over the past three years.
“This bill is a no-brainer. Taxpayers should not subsidize corporate mergers at a time when the United States is in the midst of a monopoly crisis. There is no need to say more: Congress should pass this bill immediately,” said Matt Stohler, research director at the Project on American Economic Freedom, which supports the bill.
“We are very concerned that J.D. Vance will play an excessive role in the Trump administration,” one lobbyist for a major bank told the Financial Times. “Trump’s populism is not the same as Vance’s populism.”
During President Trump’s previous term, the FTC and the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched investigations into several major technology companies, including Amazon, Apple Inc., and Google, and ultimately filed antitrust lawsuits against the companies for alleged violations of antitrust laws, which the companies deny.
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Notably, Vance, whose 2022 financial disclosure revealed he held between $101,000 and $250,000 in Bitcoin at the time, has maintained a positive view of the digital asset sector throughout his political career and voted accordingly as a senator.
In May, Senator Vance was one of more than 50 senators who voted to overturn the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB 121), which would have required banks to treat their customers’ crypto assets as liabilities and regulated how banks should handle their customers’ crypto assets. Though the resolution passed, it was ultimately vetoed by President Biden.
Earlier this year, in February, Vance led a small group of other Republican senators in sending a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler expressing concerns about the SEC’s failed lawsuit against cryptocurrency platform Digital Licensing (aka DebtBox), in which a judge found that SEC lawyers made false statements to justify freezing assets linked to the company.
As a result of the lawsuit, the SEC closed its Salt Lake City office, its smallest regional office.
