GOP nat-cons versus globalists: The populist insurgents have won
THE nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate and his pick of Senator JD Vance of Ohio marks a turning point in the transformation of the Grand Old Party (GOP) from the political home of Corporate America and Washington’s internationalist elites into the party that represents the interests of members of America’s working class and embraces a more populist, protectionist and isolationist set of policies.
Indeed, the emerging Grand Trump Party represents the turning away of the Republican Party from its commitment to free market principles, free trade, foreign policy multilateralism and open immigration, and the embrace of more statist economic policies and a unilateralist and inward-looking approach to world affairs.
It’s safe to say that the populist and nationalist Republicans have beaten the traditional pro-business and internationalist so-called Reaganite Republicans – the so-termed “globalist elites” who back low taxes, free trade, open immigration, and US diplomatic and military engagement in the world, and who were represented by the likes of former Republican presidential candidate, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah.
Senator Vance, in particular, represents a growing contingent of conservative Republicans aka “national conservatives” or nat-cons who are sceptical of big business, ambivalent about tax cuts, supportive of trade tariffs, opposed to major US military interventions abroad like the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and who advocate a more restrictive immigration policy.
These nat-cons, railing against “globalism” and “neo-liberalism”, believe that the Republican Party that once upon a time represented the interests of Big Business should now ally itself with working-class Americans. That it should represent their concerns about the collapse of the country’s manufacturing sector and the large wave of illegal immigrants coming into the country.
Indeed, the nat-cons ended up writing the party’s 2024 platform that was adopted in the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week. It pledges to raise tariffs, to encourage American manufacturing and deport thousands of illegal immigrants.
Both former President Trump and Senator Vance have been opposed to President Joe Biden’s policy of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia and have proposed that Kyiv reach a peace deal with Moscow.
Moreover, the two running mates have expressed reservations about US security commitments worldwide and in particular, about the continuing maintenance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
At the same time, they have rejected the liberal international trade agenda that have guided Republican and Democratic administrations since the end of World War II. In fact, Trump has proposed imposing 10 per cent duties on all foreign imports.
And more recently, Senator Vance expressed opposition to Nippon Steel’s offer to buy and invest in US Steel. In December he signed a letter urging Washington to block the deal and described Nippon as “a company whose allegiance lies with a foreign state”. That “foreign state” is America’s old ally, Japan.
That the 78-year-old Republican presidential candidate Trump has chosen the 39-year-old Vance as his running mate suggests that he believes that his nationalist Make-America-Great-Again vision represents the political future of the Republican Party, and that he sees Vance as his political heir apparent.
