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76report QUICKTAKE: July 15, 2024

What Vance Could Mean for the Trump Presidency and the MAGA Movement

Just days after surviving an assassination attempt, Donald Trump announced that he chose Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate.

While Senator Vance was widely known to be on a short list of candidates, Trump’s decision to go with Vance, who could potentially become the heir to the MAGA movement that Trump created, is significant in several key ways.

Vance is a deeply thoughtful individual. A celebrated author, he is intellectually engaged and gifted in a way that is rare among national politicians.

While Trump had already pulled ahead in the polls following Biden’s disastrous debate performance, his remarkably charismatic real-time response to his near-death experience in Pennsylvania has likely only strengthened his appeal to voters. The likelihood of another Trump administration is now even higher.

So who is J.D. Vance and what does his selection as the Vice-Presidential candidate tell us about how Trump may govern if he is elected in November?

We would highlight two important areas.

Foreign policy

Whereas many of the other shortlisted VP candidates had aligned themselves with continued funding and military support for the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Vance has been among the most outspoken critics of U.S. policy.

Trump has already indicated on multiple occasions that he intends to negotiate an end to the conflict immediately. By choosing Vance, Trump is further committing to this change in policy.

What’s in America’s best interest is to accept Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians, and we need to bring this war to a close…. But when I think about the great human tragedy here, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans innocent have been killed in this conflict. The thing that’s in our interest and in theirs is to stop the killing. - Sen. J.D. Vance

Industrial policy

Vance is at the center of a new breed of Republican politicians and supporters who are closely connected with the West Coast venture capital and tech community. Some of these individuals are highly visible—especially members of the “PayPal mafia” like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Others are lower profile.

Biotech entrepreneur and former Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is also connected to this crowd and quite close to Vance personally. J.D. and Vivek have been close friends since they were classmates at Yale Law.

Prior to getting elected Senator, Vance worked at a venture capital firm backed by Peter Thiel. He also credits a lecture by Peter Thiel, which he heard at Yale Law, as being one of the most influential experiences in his life.

The “conservative VC” crowd, for lack of a better description, tends to have some very specific ideas when it comes to economic matters. The selection of Vance makes it clear that they have Trump’s ear, as do several portions of the GOP platform that was recently released.

Under a section titled “Champion Innovation,” the GOP platform offers strong support for two important trends in the tech economy: crypto and AI.

Republicans will pave the way for future Economic Greatness by leading the World in Emerging Industries.

Crypto

Republicans will end Democrats' unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

We will repeal Joe Biden's dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.

While positioning himself as a pro-growth, pro-innovation private sector advocate, Vance has also expressed support for a more interventionist approach versus the “laissez faire” free market approach that has historically characterized Republican economic policy. This refers to strategic use of tariffs as well as potentially more aggressive antitrust enforcement.

A lot of my Republican colleagues look at Lina Khan … and they say, ‘well Lina Khan is sort of engaged in some sort of fundamental evil thing. And I guess I look at [Federal Trade Commission Chair] Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job. - J.D. Vance

Trump had many options when it came to his VP choice, some of whom could have offered him certain political benefits with key demographics that Vance did not bring. Others were more mainstream or ambivalent in their views on key topics, such as Governor Doug Burgum.

Yet Trump chose Vance, likely because of a strong sense of alignment with the positions and ideas that Vance has forcefully articulated on the national stage.

We expect Vance to have significant influence in a potential Trump administration. The selection of Vance should also be viewed as a signal that Trump is already in agreement on critical positions that have been advocated by the Vance faction of the Republican party and MAGA movement.

As the perceived odds of a Trump victory have increased since the debate, stocks have generally drifted higher. From a market perspective, we consider the selection of Vance as reinforcing a pragmatic, pro-growth policy agenda that most investors seem to favor. To the extent a Trump victory continues to get priced in, this will likely support the flow of capital into equity markets.

In this context, it is perhaps worth recalling how influential the election of Ronald Reagan (after a prolonged period of high inflation and geopolitical volatility) was on the long-term trajectory of the U.S. stock market.

In case you missed it…

We just published our latest LIVESTREAM discussion on the @76research channel.

We covered A LOT OF GROUND…

—The intensifying DIVISION between the BRICS coalition and the West amid the NATO summit

—Prospects for a new GOLD-backed monetary system as India ramps up its gold reserves and the Russian economy gets an upgrade

—How the Magnificent Seven tech stocks have distorted markets

—A TOP PICK from our Income Builder Model Portfolio

—TRUMP’s growth-oriented policy agenda and plans to reinvigorate the U.S. economy as he takes a big lead in the polls

76research LIVE: A Divided World in FOCUS

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