After months of speculation, former president Donald Trump has announced his 2024 running mate: Ohio Senator JD Vance. Despite a checkered history of comments about Trump and little governing experience, Vance's relative youth, and perceived ability to communicate Trump's agenda and connect with working class voters has allowed him to come out on top of a crowded field of potential candidates. But what would a JD Vance vice presidency mean for Australia?
Who is JD Vance?
Known for: Senator from Ohio (2023–)
Home state: Ohio
Age in November 2024: 40 (born 2 August 1984)
Ohio’s newest senator attracted national attention in 2016 for his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy which described his Rust Belt upbringing. The former marine and venture capitalist was backed by both Trump and tech billionaire Peter Thiel in his 2022 Senate campaign. Despite closely aligning himself with Trump since his Senate run, Vance was not always a Trump ally, and publicly and vociferously criticised him during the 2016 presidential campaign. Unlike a number of the other vice presidential contenders, Vance has spoken widely on foreign policy, including on Indo-Pacific security.
VP CV
Vance built his career on his 2016 memoir, which became a sensation and saw him labelled a “spokesman for a disaffected group — America’s working-class whites.” Despite his previous criticisms of Trump, Vance has come to strongly defend the former president on a host of issues and become a leading conservative voice. His youth will also likely play in Trump’s favour, given concerns about Trump’s age. Vance has relatively little experience in governing and Ohio is no longer the swing state it once was, but his perceived ability to speak to the conservative base may make him an attractive choice for Trump.
“As Vice President, JD will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our troops, and will do everything he can to help me Make America Great Again."Donald Trump15 July 2024, Truth Social post
Relationship with Trump
Vance once proclaimed himself a “Never Trump guy” and was a strong critic of him during the 2016 election, writing that “Trump’s actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd.” In a series of unearthed deleted tweets, Vance described Trump as “reprehensible,” “noxious” and “an idiot” and wrote in a tweet that he would not vote for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. However, Vance later apologised for his comments when he sought Ohio’s Senate seat. Vance picked up an endorsement from Trump, who said that Vance "may have said some not-so-great things about me in the past, but he gets it now.” Vance has since endorsed Trump in the 2024 race, said that he would not have certified the 2020 election results and pledged to “fight for the America First Agenda in the Senate.”
What should Australians know?
Vance’s foreign policy stance is labelled by some to be that of a “Asia firster” in that it rests on shifting US focus away from Europe and towards addressing the threat of China. He has argued for US foreign policy to prioritise US national interest rather than values, and has indicated support for the AUKUS agreement. Vance has denounced continued support for Ukraine, but is strongly in favour of aid to Taiwan and Israel.
Foreign policy
- America First | Vance has lauded Trump’s presidency as “the first real disruption to a failed consensus” in US foreign policy. Vance’s 2024 endorsement of Trump praised his “successful foreign policy” as the “most important part” of Trump’s legacy, specifically because the former president “started no wars,” and pushed for Europe to “take more responsibility for its own defense.”He has argued for US foreign policy to be “based on our national interest” and called for the United States to “get progressive politics out of our foreign policy.” Vance has described neoconservative foreign policy as “strategically and morally stupid” and said that a strong domestic manufacturing base is “the most important component of projecting power overseas.”
- Asian alliances | Vance has repeatedly emphasised the need to prioritise Asia in US foreign policy because China is “our most important geopolitical foe.” He has said that he is “a fan of AUKUS” and that in Asia “we have to try to promote those with aligned interests and encourage those who are a little bit more on the fence to think about things from our perspective.”
- China | Vance describes his strategic position on China as a “straightforwardly economically nationalist argument, [and] even though it may cost a couple basis points of GDP, we should be making more of our stuff.” In the Senate, he co-sponsored the China Trade Relations Act, which would revoke China’s permanent most-favoured-nation status, due to his support for American manufacturing. Vance has tied focus on China to a need to disengage from Ukraine, saying the United States must "stop the focus on Ukraine, we’ve got to focus on China because that’s where the real enemy is.”
- Taiwan | Vance has said that an invasion of Taiwan is “the thing that we need to prevent more than anything" because it “would decimate our entire economy” due to Taiwan’s dominance of the semiconductor industry. He commended the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which seeks to bolster US domestic semiconductor manufacturing, calling it “a great piece of legislation.” However, Vance has also criticised Biden for “not sending weapons to Taiwan... because we’re sending those weapons to Ukraine or elsewhere.”
- Trade | Vance has supported many of Trump’s trade policies. In May 2024, Vance called for the United States to “apply some broad-based tariffs, especially on goods coming in from China and not just solar panels and EV stuff”, and “protect American industries from all of the competition.” He has strongly criticised NAFTA and the admission of China into the World Trade Organization, and argued that trade and immigration and trade are inextricably linked.
- Ukraine | Vance has said that the war in Ukraine is unsustainable and that he is “sick of Joe Biden focusing on the border of a country I don't care about while he lets the border of his own country become a total war zone." In April 2024, he wrote that he “remain[s] opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war.” He has promoted an isolationist approach to Europe, saying that “the United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long.” However, Vance disagrees that the United States should pull out of NATO, andhas also stated that “the point is not we want to abandon Europe. The point is we need to focus as a country on East Asia, and we need our European allies to step up in Europe.”
- Israel | Vance supports military aid to Israel becausehe believes that, unlike Ukraine, US support to Israel has an “achievable objective.”He has reaffirmed that the United States must “offer support to one of our most important allies as they face an existential threat.” Vance visited Tel Aviv during his 2022 Senate campaign and said that he would "be as strong an advocate for the US-Israel relationship as anyone,” though he has also suggested that “Americans have to be a little bit more humble about what we can accomplish in the Middle East.” In 2024, he said that the United States needed to combine “the Abraham Accords approach with the defeat of Hamas”, so that “Israel and the Sunni nations can play a regional counterweight to Iran again.”
Domestic policy
- Institutions | Echoing Trump’s policies on the federal bureaucracy, Vance has argued that the president should have the authority to fire bureaucrats and ignore “illegitimate” US Supreme Court rulings. In a 2021 podcast, he said that he would advise Trump to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
- Abortion | Vance called the overturning of the Roe v Wade decision a “great day” that “vindicates a half century of work.” He believes abortion is “primarily a state issue” but also thinks that “it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.” Vance has stated that anti-abortion Republicans must “accept [that] people do not want blanket abortion bans” and that exceptions for the life of the mother, rape or incest must be provided. He is also a sponsor of a current bill in the Senate to ban taxpayer-funded abortions.
- Climate change | In a 2020 speech, Vance said that the world is facing a “climate problem”, which he blamed primarily on “unrestrained emissions in China.” In the same speech, he called natural gas reliance an “improvement over dirtier forms of power but isn’t exactly the sort of thing that’s going to take us to a clean energy future” and suggested that the United States could become a world leader in clean energy. However, during his US Senate campaign in 2021, Vance called himself “sceptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man” though said he “absolutely want[s] us to have clean energy.” He sought to repeal US tax credits for electric vehicles in 2023, which he has characterised as a “scam” and “green energy daydreams that are offshoring [Ohio] jobs to China.”
- Immigration | Vance has defended Trump’s comments on immigration and reportedly said he would push for US$3 billion to “complete portions” of the border wall that Trump began. He introduced the State Border Security Act which would “authorize certain States to erect temporary protective fencing within 25 miles of the southwest border to deter illegal immigration.” Vance has also argued that the United States needs to “declare the Mexican drug cartels a terrorist organisation”— a move which he has said would allow the US military to “go to Mexico, to go on our southern border.”
Read more
- Axios: JD Vance is on Trump’s VP shortlist (19 January 2024)
- New York Times: What is JD Vance’s angle? (25 September 2023)
- Washington Post: The radicalization of JD Vance (4 January 2022)
