Business leaders are worried about JD Vance and the future of the GOP

Business leaders watched with growing frustration as Donald Trump pushed the Republican Party toward a kind of populism they fear will threaten their bottom lines. Now, they’re worried about JD Vance.

The Ohio senator represents a new kind of conservative right that is skeptical of corporations and eschews the GOP’s old free trade ideology. And he has done little in office or as the vice presidential nominee to quell their concerns.

Vance has consistently bashed big business, expressed antipathy toward corporate merger activities, sided with labor and emphasized his support for costly tariffs. He’s spoken favorably of the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission chair, Lina Khan, who is universally viewed as a thorn in the side of major businesses, and forged unlikely alliances with progressives including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

With Vance by Trump’s side, some corporate leaders worry a second Trump administration would be even more hostile to their interests than the first was. While he would have little agenda-setting power of his own, Vance would likely reinforce Trump on key economic issues — trade policy, labor issues, market power — unlike former Vice President Mike Pence, who acted more as a check on Trump’s populist leanings.

“[Vance] has taken a tack that big business, particularly some of the big tech stuff, is by definition bad,” said William H. Strong, a Republican donor and financial executive. “Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you’re bad … I don’t like those broad characterizations that he alludes to that big business is somehow bad. It’s just not.”

Vance isn’t raising concern among business leaders only because of specific policies he might push. They also fear Vance would help turn the party more broadly even further away from the pro-business, small government conservatism that defined its policies for decades, accelerating the years-long change.

Gone are the days of the free-market approaches of Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman.

“That orthodoxy has definitely changed, which is there’s much more an open discussion about tariffs, there’s much more an open discussion about antitrust, there’s much more of a discussion about like appealing to union — to rank and file union members,” said a partner at a major investment firm who has given to both Republicans and Democrats and who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “That’s a huge change over the past decade that we’ve seen, and Trump has ushered in … Maybe that’s where the whole party is moving.”

While many business leaders and GOP donors see a Trump administration as still better for business than a Harris one, the GOP’s ongoing ideological realignment has made the party an increasingly uncomfortable fit.

“It’s more of a grin and bear it strategy,” said energy executive Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor. “Overall, a Trump administration is better for the economy, better for business. I don’t see people sliding to the Harris administration but I see them as no longer a perfect fit for the Republican Party — but it’s what they have.”

Some people are particularly concerned about Vance’s isolationist philosophy, Eberhart said. He himself would not have picked Vance to be Trump’s next vice president, he said.

Still, the business community needed to come to terms with the change of the party, Eberhart said, and he emphasized that he was among the people who are “coming to terms with” Vance. He recalled how the Ohio senator had assured some at a fundraiser in Oklahoma City that he would support drilling from the energy sector.

“The anti-corporate populist strain of the Republican Party is here to stay,” said Justin Sayfie, a Republican corporate consultant and former appointee during the Trump administration. “JD Vance is the next iteration of that.”

But the party might not be done changing.

Corporate America’s relationship with Trump has been fraught since he became a mainstay of national politics in 2016. The corporate world favors stability, and Trump’s tenure brought anything but. Business leaders were quick to distance themselves from him, and those who found themselves in Trump’s crossfire paid a price.

The distance between big business and the GOP grew even more apparent in 2020. Major companies embraced principles around diversity, equity, and inclusion in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and Republicans blasted those businesses for going “woke.” After the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, many big businesses altogether disavowed the Republicans who had refused to certify the results of the election, choosing to withhold campaign funds.

But Trump is once again unavoidable, and much of corporate America is not sure what to expect from his second White House term with a new vice presidential pick.

“The days of corporate lobbyists controlling Washington through weak, ineffective politicians like Kamala Harris are over,” said Vance spokesperson William Martin in a statement.

Many Republicans — even the former president himself — acknowledge that a vice president has little real power. But Trump is notoriously persuadable, and some fear what impact Vance could have on Trump’s positions in a seat of unfettered access.

For those perturbed by Trump’s tumultuousness, Pence quelled some of those concerns during the first Trump administration. He was a Washington insider who previously chaired the House Republican Conference, and he was strategic in his battles in a Trump White House, working to steer the debate when Trump veered off course.

The fear now around Vance is that it’s not clear how or whether the potential next vice president would shape Trump’s views in those situations, said one Republican lobbyist and Trump White House alum.

“The thinking now of the business community is that Vance will not be a check on some of the more populist ideas that Trump has, so I think that primarily is where the focus is,” the person said, pointing to, for example, Vance’s praise of Khan.

At the helm of the consumer protection agency, Khan has aggressively gone after corporate juggernauts, to the chagrin of technology giants, grocers, and healthcare companies. Despite pressure to the contrary, it’s unclear if even Kamala Harris, if elected, would keep her on and risk upsetting financial allies.

Vance has praised Khan’s antitrust actions, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board fretted that Vance could push Trump to reappoint her. “Do Republicans want to rein in the regulatory state or unleash it?” asked the longtime conservative allies on the Journal’s editorial board.

Vance does have his defenders in the business community. Some point to his time in Silicon Valley as a venture capitalist as evidence of his ties to business leaders. His links to tech financiers have helped the GOP forge ties with big donors who’d previously given heavily to Democrats. And while Vance has been a populist on certain economic policy issues, there is still widespread belief that he is in lockstep with Trump’s overall vision to cut taxes and slash regulations for big businesses.

But it can be hard to nail down exactly where Vance stands on key issues. He was one of Trump’s most vocal critics before becoming one of his most effective attack dogs.

As one media CEO put it, Vance was “generally quite effective” in the vice presidential debate. “Why he acts like a buffoon at other times is puzzling. But it clearly reflects at least his view of what one has to do to appeal to the broader Republican electorate, and of course of Trump himself.”

During Vance’s time in the Senate, the Ohio senator has proven to be an unpredictable firebrand. He has praised Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán and worked with Warren and other Democrats on legislation to punish leaders of big banks when their businesses fail.

“You got a guy who you can’t count on to be a solid yes or a solid no on kind of shirts and skins votes in Congress — what do you think they will do when they have the power of the administrative state?” questioned one Republican lobbyist. “So I think there’s a lot of fear.”

Amid the realignment of business and partisanship, the Harris campaign has sought to brandish its support from business leaders and sell itself as a ticket backed by the corporate class. Billionaire entrepreneur and television personality Mark Cuban has been a top emissary of the campaign, telling his followers that Harris is listening to the business community.

But business leaders are still broadly with the GOP. They concede that their fortunes would still be better during a Trump presidency than a Harris one. He has promised to extend his tax bill and reduce the corporate tax rate. Even with some headaches among the Republican donor class, Harris is perceived as a graver threat to the bottom line in the short term.

Republican donor Eric Levine, a lawyer who works closely with large corporations, said that he hoped some more traditional Republicans would surround the former president. He would not have picked Vance for vice president and would have preferred “virtually anybody else on that stage” from the Republican primary debates. He likened some elements of Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention to remarks that could have been given by Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and progressive champion, and said “that doesn’t make me warm and fuzzy.” But, Levine contended, Trump’s ticket was still stronger than the alternative.

“I just don’t know who’s going to have his ear this time,” Levine said of Trump. “I’m not a populist, and most of the people I know are not populists, and we’re not isolationists.”

And if they are, for the most part, backing Republicans now, some GOPers said that the business community would simply need to come to terms with the changing politics of the time.

“There are folks within the Republican Party who want to go back to the pre-2016 mindset. I think that it’s just not possible,” said Jonathan Baron, a Washington-based public affairs advisor.

The reason, he suggested, should be obvious.

“The success of figures as unconventional and new as Donald Trump and JD Vance,” he said, “is the best evidence that the change is unavoidable.”