Vance and Trump in 2022. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Sen. J.D. Vance solidifies Donald Trump's pitch for protectionism and anti-China economic policy that seeks to bolster the U.S. energy sector, Nick writes.
Why it matters: Vance's nomination for vice president makes for the most hawkish ticket on trade in recent memory and deepens the campaign's ties to the anti-ESG movement.
Driving the news: Vance could now have a prominent voice in the debate about how Republicans should scale back the IRA and whether they should repeal it wholesale.
- To that end, he floated legislation last year to repeal the IRA's clean vehicle tax credit and replace it with an incentive promoting U.S.-made gas powered cars.
- "Right now, the official policy of the Biden administration is to spend billions of dollars on subsidies for electric vehicles made overseas," he said at the time. "If we're subsidizing anything, it ought to be Ohio workers — not the green energy daydreams that are offshoring their jobs to China."
Between the lines: The onetime Trump critic ran his 2022 Senate campaign as a loyalist to the former president on policy. But like some other GOP populists, he's been an occasional bipartisan collaborator.
- Vance led the charge with fellow Ohioan Sherrod Brown on the Railway Safety Act in response to the East Palestine train derailment.
- He's also worked with Democrats on issues affecting the Rust Belt, namely onshoring American manufacturing.
- He sponsored legislation with Mark Kelly that would dole out grants to communities looking to attract manufacturing, as well as a bipartisan bill that would slap tariffs on Mexican steel.
Zoom in: Vance is close with anti-ESG crusader and onetime presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
- He also has ties to billionaire Peter Thiel, another prominent voice in the anti-ESG world, who backed Vance's 2022 Senate campaign.
- "ESG is basically a massive racket to enrich Wall Street and enrich the financial sector of the country, at the expense of the industries that actually employ a lot of Ohio's workers for middle-class jobs," Vance told Breitbart in 2022.
The other side: Climate Power Executive Director Lori Lodes called Vance "a climate denier who is all too happy to do Big Oil's bidding and pad their profits at the expense of working people."
Our thought bubble: Vance, frankly, doesn't have much history on energy and climate policy.
- His views on climate change and fossil fuels, and his criticisms of the IRA, are conventionally Republican. He did introduce a bill that would double prison terms for climate change activists who vandalize federal artworks.
- But he's an important Republican voice in a world in which trade is increasingly the most important policy front for climate and energy.
