JD Vance proclaims ‘America first’ as Republicans embrace economic populism

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JD Vance railed against Wall Street and corporate America on Wednesday night, putting economic populism at the centre of the Republican party’s campaign to return Donald Trump to the White House.

In a speech formally accepting his nomination as Trump’s running mate, Vance praised a “country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power” could rise to the highest levels of politics, as he pledged unwavering loyalty to the former president.

The 39-year-old Ohio senator leaned heavily on his impoverished upbringing to slam Wall Street and the elites, depicting Trump’s Maga movement as a champion of the American worker.

“We are done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man,” he said. “We’re done importing foreign labour, we are going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages.

“We need a leader who is not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and non-union alike, a leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for American corporations and American industry,” Vance said.

The speech on the third night of the Republican convention in Milwaukee set out battle lines for the final stretch of the US presidential election, with Vance depicting Democrats as elites in the pocket of global business and Republicans as the party of America’s “forgotten” communities and blue-collar workers.

Vance’s attacks on big business came despite his brief political career being backed by some of the wealthiest men in the US, including libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, and as he formally joined a Trump campaign supported by Wall Street titans such as Stephen Schwarzman and Bill Ackman.

Vance, who would be among the youngest vice-presidents in US history, drew loud cheers from the crowd as he laid bare the scale of the Republican party’s Trump-era shift away from free trade and interventionist foreign policy towards protectionism and isolationism.

Vance also lashed out at the Democratic president, saying that when he was in primary school, “a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported Nafta, a bad trade deal that sent thousands of good jobs to Mexico”.

When he was in secondary school, he said, “that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq”, prompting chants from the crowd: “Joe must go!”

Wednesday night marked Vance’s first big speech on the national stage and came two days after Trump announced him as his running mate, thrusting the US Marine Corps veteran and Yale Law School graduate into the heart of the election campaign.

Vance’s selection has raised alarm bells across Europe given his long-standing opposition to providing more US aid to Ukraine. On Wednesday night, he echoed Trump’s criticisms of Nato and reluctance to entangle the US military in foreign conflicts.

“Together we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer,” Vance said.

“We will send our kids to war only if we must,” he added. But “when we punch, we are going to punch hard”.

Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate — and a possible future standard bearer for the Maga movement — came at the urging of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

The younger Trump addressed the Republican convention on Wednesday immediately before Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, introduced her husband.

“Look at me and my friend JD Vance,” said Donald Trump Jr. “A kid from Appalachia and a kid from Trump Tower. We grew up worlds apart yet now we are fighting side by side to save the country we love. And by the way, JD Vance is going to make one hell of a vice-president.”

Vance, who worked in venture capital before turning to politics, first gained a national profile in 2016 with the publication of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy about being raised in poverty by his Appalachian grandmother while his mother struggled with drug addiction.

Vance once referred to Trump as an “idiot”, saying he “couldn’t stomach” voting for him and comparing him to “cultural heroin” that would be unable to solve society’s ills.

But by the time Vance ran for the US Senate in 2022, he had become a Trump supporter and has since emerged as one of the president’s most pugnacious advocates.

Additional reporting by Sonja Hutson in Milwaukee