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Ohio Senator and candidate for vice president J.D. Vance officially accepted his party’s nomination Wednesday night, delivering a 36-minute speech that made sure to take some jabs at the current administration and promised a better future for the U.S.’s middle class.
“We need a leader who is not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike,” Vance said of his running mate, former president Donald Trump, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “A leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations but will stand up for American companies and American industry.”
Vance promised that a second Trump administration would not cater to Wall Street’s interests and accused “Wall Street barons” of crashing the economy. Although that mirrors much of Trump’s own past rhetoric, especially as a 2016 presidential candidate, the former president has been courting Wall Street, promising looser regulations and low taxes.
Trump, himself a former businessman of varying success, has said that he would favor a 15% corporate tax rate, down from 21%. His Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 had previously slashed the federal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Trump is also considering tapping JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as his next Treasury Secretary, a man who has been one of the most influential people on the Street for more than a decade. Dimon has contributed to both Republican and Democratic candidates in the latest election cycle, including campaigns for Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democrat Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.
Bringing back ‘made in America’
A solid portion of Vance’s speech was dedicated to railing against global trade, foreign labor, and revitalizing domestic manufacturing. That last one is something he would find common ground on with many Democrats, including President Joe Biden, who has made restoring factory jobs a key point of his economic agenda.
Vance attacked the — now nixed — North American Free Trade Agreement, blaming Biden for the policy that created an international trade bloc with Canada and Mexico. The agreement helped disrupt industries like auto manufacturing and has been blamed for stagnating wages.
“Thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us, our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor, and, in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl,” Vance said, referring in part to the “China Shock” of the early 2000s.
Vance also called for restrictions on foreign workers and promised to stop China from “from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.” He said a second Trump administration would bring back American factories, domesticate supply chains, and make the “made in the U.S.A.” label more common.
A “green new scam”
Vance on Wednesday mocked the Biden administration’s clean energy and climate goals, naming it the “Green New Scam,” a reference to the “Green New Deal.” The climate proposal, introduced in Congress five years ago, calls for a 10-year plan creating millions of green jobs.
Vance also advocated to stop buying energy from “countries that hate us.” The U.S. imported petroleum from 86 countries last year, most of which came from Canada and Mexico, at 52% and 11%, respectively.
Both Trump and Vance are advocates for domestic natural gas and oil production and oppose electric vehicles and solar power. Ohio is ranked sixth in the U.S. in gas production and is the eight-largest consumer of coal. Vance, who has denied climate change and called “the whole EV thing” a “scam,” has received more than $352,000 from oil and gas lobbies.
Despite Vance’s criticism, his home state has benefitted greatly from EVs. Ultium Cells, an EV battery joint venture between LG Energy Solutions and General Motors, has a plant in Warren, Ohio, while First Solar is expanding its solar panel manufacturing in the state. As of 2022, Ohio’s clean energy sector employed more than 114,000 workers, according to Clean Jobs Midwest, which noted that the sector’s jobs grew more than twice as fast as the overall economy.