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A month before former President Donald Trump selected Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, the Ohio Republican, one-time Trump critic and now staunch supporter, cited a 2018 dinner with CEOs as a turning point in his political evolution.
In an interview The New York Times In an article published in June, Vance explained a bit about how he came to support Trump and how his political views have changed.
Vance told the outlet he’d been invited to an event hosted by the Business Roundtable, a nonprofit lobbying group of CEOs, in 2018. Vance first came to national attention about two years after his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which explained why views like Trump’s were popular among working-class white people, rose to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Vance said he was sitting at dinner next to the CEO of a major hotel chain who was “a typical corporate executive complaining that he has to pay his employees higher wages.”
CEOs have complained about the labor market and how President Trump’s actions at the border have affected relationships with employees.
Vance told the Times that the CEO turned to him and said, “Well, you know this better than anybody: These people just need to get their asses up and come to work and do their jobs. And now, because we can’t hire immigrants, or as many immigrants as we used to, we have to hire these people at higher wages.”
Recalling that moment, Vance told the Times, “The fact that this guy viewed me as sympathetic to his issues and not workers’ issues made me realize that I was on a train that had its own momentum. I have to get off this train, or I’m going to wake up in 10 years and really hate everything I’ve become.”
“So I decided to get off that train, and I felt the only way I could do that was to alienate and anger the people who, in some ways, love my books,” he continued.
Vance has voiced a greater support for the government to play a more direct role in the economy than most Republicans.
Vance has previously supported higher corporate taxes and the minimum wage, and has criticized Republican-backed “right to work” policies that could harm unions. He also co-sponsored a bill to end tax-free mergers for large corporations.
“Trump’s rise has split the populist and aggressive wing of the Republican Party on economic policy, and Vance is one of the leaders of that populist wing,” Brian Riedl of the center-right Manhattan Institute told The Post. “Trump is more economically populist and anti-free trade than traditional Republicans, and Vance has been a vocal advocate for this new populist economic agenda within the Republican Party.”
The outlet reported that some business leaders and major Republican donors oppose Trump choosing Vance as his running mate.
The Post also noted that some of Vance’s previous economic policies seem at odds with those he would likely adopt as vice presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose broad economic platform includes deregulation, further reducing corporate tax rates and shrinking the federal government.
Vance was an outspoken critic of Trump before he became his supporter. During his first presidential run, Vance criticized the then-candidate in interviews and tweets, calling Trump “reprehensible” and saying he could become “the American Hitler,” and describing himself as a Never-Trumper.
But in 2021, while campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, Vance came out in support of Trump and said he was wrong about the president, a development that perplexed many who were fans of Vance’s books.
At the same time that he endorsed Trump, he could win the election, gain support on the right and potentially even secure the vice presidency.