Trump Running Mate J.D. Vance’s Antitrust Views Divide Business Leaders
It is an election year — and political uncertainty is top of mind for businesses.
With the news Monday (July 15) that presidential candidate Donald Trump has picked Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), a former lawyer and venture capitalist, as his running mate, the potential implications of the Republican party’s 2024 ticket across the business and regulatory landscape is top-of-mind for firms.
That’s because Sen. Vance, who has embraced positive views of both the cryptocurrency space and Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is viewed by some as a maverick who departs from traditional Republican economic views.
The 39-year-old VP pick, who worked at Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management and also started his own $93 million venture fund, Narya Capital, with backing from Thiel and other Silicon Valley luminaries including Eric Schmidt and Marc Andreessen, has notably expressed concern that incumbent, large tech companies have too much influence in politics and across the operating landscape.
“It’s time to break Google up,” Vance tweeted on X this February. He has made similar comments about Meta, implying the parent company of Facebook and other popular social platforms should be “split up.”
Vance’s comparatively aggressive stance on antitrust enforcement puts him at odds with many in his own party, and comes as Big Tech companies are increasingly under antitrust and regulatory scrutiny around the world.
He broke from more traditional Republican party ranks earlier this year when he described FTC Chair Khan as “doing a pretty good job” and the “best person” in the Biden Administration. Vance also stressed that his view of antitrust encompasses not only helping small firms compete, but also prioritizing workers and the quality of consumer goods.
Representatives for the VP candidate did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
Read more: Tech Titans in the Crosshairs: DOJ and FTC Ready to Rumble Over AI Dominance
A Former Silicon Valley Tech VC Who Says Big Tech is Too Powerful
Vance, whose 2022 Senate campaign was bankrolled in part by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, has had his political rise cheered on by his former Silicon Valley colleagues. Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov tweeted on X in response to Vance’s VP nod that, “We have a former Tech VC in the White House. Greatest country on earth.”
Still, Vance’s unorthodox approach to antitrust — particularly as it relates to Big Tech — reflects a growing tension between the conservative party’s impulse to mitigate the impact and power of regulatory agencies and an embrace of leveraging antitrust laws to challenge powerful, incumbent businesses.
Vance currently sits on three Senate committees: the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
As recently as this March, the VP nominee and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced the bi-partisan Stop Subsidizing Giant Mergers Act, which would end tax-free treatment for corporate mergers and acquisitions involving firms with combined average annual gross receipts exceeding $500 million during the prior three years.
“This legislation is a no-brainer, as it’s pretty obvious taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize corporate mergers when America is in the midst of a monopoly crisis. There’s really not much more to say, Congress should pass this one immediately,” said Matt Stoller, Research Director of the American Economic Liberties Project, which endorses the bill.
“We are very concerned about J.D. Vance playing an outsized role in a Trump administration,” one big bank lobbyist told the Financial Times (FT). “Trump populism and Vance populism are not the same.”
Both the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under Trump’s prior term as president initiated investigations into several Big Tech companies, including Amazon, Apple Meta and Google, and eventually sued them over alleged antitrust violations — violations which the tech companies deny.
See also: Middle-Market CFOs Tag Competitive Positioning Among Top Drivers of Uncertainty
Crypto’s Role in the 2024 Race
Notably, Vance — whose 2022 financial disclosure revealed that he at the time held between $100,001 and $250,000 in bitcoin — has maintained a positive view on the digital asset sector throughout his political career, and voted as a Senator accordingly.
In May, Vance was among the five dozen senators who voted to overturn the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB 121), which guides how banks should handle customers’ crypto assets, requiring them to treat these assets as liabilities. While the resolution passed, President Biden ultimately vetoed it.
At the start of the year, in February, Vance spearheaded a small group of other Republican senators who penned a letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, raising concerns over the failed case it brought against cryptocurrency platform Digital Licensing, also known as Debt Box, where a judge found that SEC lawyers used false statements to justify freezing assets linked to the company.
As a result of the case, the SEC closed its Salt Lake City branch, its smallest regional office.
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