It was a good deal for corporate conservatives, many of whom were socially moderate or liberal, but who got what they wanted in the economic sphere and didn’t have to worry too much about traditionalist policies. After all, social conservatives had to wait nearly 40 years after Reagan’s reelection for there to be enough Supreme Court appointees ready to overturn the Constitution. Roe v. WadeFor much of that time, the prevailing norms have become more liberal, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues.
President Donald Trump’s party convention this week and his choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate suggest that, at least in principle, companies are being asked to accept new deals that are less aligned with their interests.
Trump continues to promise big tax cuts and deregulation, even telling oil executives earlier this year that he would repeal Biden’s clean energy package and other environmental regulations if they raised $1 billion in funding.
But Mr. Trump is demanding much tougher terms from businesses than Mr. Reagan’s sometimes evasive social conservatism: Business people who generally support free trade will likely find themselves forced to accept steep tariffs and tough immigration restrictions that they believe will, of course, slow growth.
The convention itself will cause further indigestion in the business world. Who would have thought that Republican delegates would applaud Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien when he called the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce “unions for big business” and delivered an impassioned rally in defense of “workers who have been sold out to big banks, big tech companies, corporate leaders and the elites?” If you ignored the Republican slogans posted around the venue and the obligatory Trump references, you might have thought O’Brien was speaking at a Bernie Sanders rally.
Vance, meanwhile, has made a name for himself for frequently breaking away from Republican free-market orthodoxy: He has criticized America’s postwar globalized order for making the country more dependent on cheaper labor, and he has championed raising the minimum wage.
He predicted that a second Trump term would see “a much more aggressive approach to protecting domestic manufacturing” and criticized those who would privatize Social Security. He told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, “I don’t understand why anyone would think that a lot of our problems are going to be solved by just taking a bunch of old people and saying, ‘You guys need to fend for yourself.'”
Particularly surprising is his praise for the aggressive antitrust work of Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, who has been used as a punching bag by much of his own party (and the business community).
But business leaders and many others have reason to worry about the authoritarian side of Vance’s populism. For example, he has said that, unlike then-Vice President Mike Pence, he would have refused to acknowledge Biden’s election in 2020. He has praised Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán along with the new nationalists in his party and is skeptical of aid to Ukraine. He also He advised President Trump to “fire all mid-level civil servants and replace them with our own people.”
Shortly after Saturday’s shooting, Vance declared that Biden’s campaign rhetoric “led directly to the assassination attempt on President Trump.” Efforts to delegitimize criticism of Trump clash with former President Biden’s calls for “unity,” unless defined as full support for the Republican candidate.
Trump clearly wants to play up some of the fear of alienating business, so long as Vance can send the right message to the blue-collar voters who were key to the former president’s rise. But the question remains: Is the Republican move away from market orthodoxy real, or is it primarily an election ploy?
To be sure, Vance is not alone in his unorthodox economic views: Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) have both become increasingly critical of corporations and rising inequality, and a new generation of conservative think tanks like American Compass and intellectuals like Sohrab Ahmari are proposing far more interventionist policies.
But most Republicans in Congress are fervent supporters of free-market ideals and rely heavily on corporate funding for their campaigns. They are more intent on criticizing regulators than those they regulate, as seen in their attacks on Khan and efforts to overturn pro-union National Labor Relations Board rulings under Biden.
History is on the side of market fundamentalists winning. President Trump’s first term policies were deeply anti-worker. His main legislative accomplishments were traditional Republican tax cuts that primarily benefited corporations and the wealthy, not an infrastructure bill he kept promising but never delivering on.
The ideal outcome for Trump would be for blue-collar voters to take his and Vance’s populist rhetoric seriously and for business groups to ignore it, but unlike the deal Reagan made with his conservative opponents four decades ago, Trump’s proposal would inflict serious material losses on the wrong side.
