JD Vance Pioneered ‘New Right’ Economics. Trump May Not Embrace It.

Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is a pioneer in what friends and critics alike call a new form of Republican economic thinking. It’s a vision to steer the economy toward advancing socially conservative goals, even when those policies defy conservative orthodoxy about government intervention in private markets.

Those who know him well say Mr. Vance’s economic views have evolved to match his deepening commitment to social conservative causes, along with his growing anger at the role large companies play in shaping American society and politics.

Mr. Vance has built his brief political career on that new brand of economic populism.

He has championed efforts to reward families for having children, with tax breaks that some Republican economists say discourage people from working. He has also pushed to disempower large businesses, particularly tech companies that Mr. Vance and his allies say have used their market power to silence conservatives and hurt workers and children, through support for aggressive antitrust enforcement and even some corporate tax increases.

“He’s a social conservative first,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington who has known Mr. Vance and discussed policy with him for years, well before he decided to enter politics.

“The economic policy is in service of this broader social vision, where you don’t have to go to college to earn a middle-class wage,” Mr. Strain said. “Where your kids are safe from the tech companies. And where these big businesses, run by elites, are not a threat to local companies.”

Since taking office in 2023, Mr. Vance has supported raising the minimum wage for people authorized to work in the United States, cast doubt on the virtues of corporate tax cuts and privately expressed admiration for some of the economic stances of Senator Elizabeth Warren, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, whom he has joined to push legislation cracking down on big banks. He has also called Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair whose aggressive antitrust agenda has angered business groups and many Republicans, one of the few Biden administration officials who is doing a “pretty good job.”