Trump picks Senate Banking member Vance as running mate

Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump has tapped Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his vice presidential pick for the 2024 presidential election ticket. 

Vance, a new member of the Senate Banking Committee, is currently serving as the junior senator from Ohio. He was vaulted to fame after the publication of his 2016 memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," which described the economic struggles of white, working class voters in the Rust Belt where he grew up. 

On the Senate Banking Committee, Vance has become emblematic of a rising tide of populist politics in the Republican party, bucking the stances of typical conservative lawmakers in banking policy by being more skeptical of corporate orthodoxy and critical of industry interests. 

He has occasionally teamed up with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — one of the leading progressive voices on the committee — on issues like executive compensation after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and other large regional institutions last summer. He also signed on to a bill championed by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, that requires credit card issuers to allow their cards to be run on two separate rails that are not both Visa and Mastercard. 

Vance previously worked as a venture capitalist. During the 2016 election, Vance decried Trump's candidacy, but by the time he decided to run for Senate in 2022, he reframed himself as a Trump supporter, and adopted many of his views. 

While bank or financial policy is still unlikely to play a significant role in the 2024 presidential election, Vance's selection to join the Republican ticket would give him a strong voice in choosing regulators to fill banking regulatory vacancies in a second Trump administration.

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While, for example, Vance joined other Republicans in criticizing the Federal Reserve's oversight of Silicon Valley Bank in a hearing last June, he also dinged the growing power of large banks — specifically JPMorgan Chase's purchase of First Republic. 

"That strikes me as a really, really bad deal for the rest of our financial system, but a really big deal for JP Morgan," Vance said. "I would love for us to pursue policies that actually preserve and strengthen the three-tiered banking system rather than make JPMorgan more and more powerful, which is what it seems that we're doing right now."

Also in the aftermath of the Silicon Valley Bank failure, Vance circulated an amendment to an executive compensation bill that eventually passed through the Senate Banking Committee that would move oversight of state-chartered banks with more than $100 billion of assets to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. He also floated a measure that would strengthen an existing prohibition on mergers involving banks that hold more than 10% of the country's deposits. 

However, none of the amendments that Vance floated wound up in the final version of the executive compensation bill that passed the Senate Banking Committee.

He's been a particularly sharp critic of large tech companies, saying that they have too much influence. He, alongside Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., introduced the Stop Subsidizing Giant Mergers Act, which would increase the tax burden of dealmaking between companies above a certain asset threshold. 

He released a bill that would insure all deposits in all payroll accounts at banks and credit unions with fewer than $225 billion assets.  

Vance also ran as an ally to the crypto industry in his 2022 campaign, sliding neatly into Trump's 2024 campaign platform. He criticized a bill that would have upped crypto reporting requirements in individuals' taxes, and said that crypto is "taking off" because of fears that voters could be cut off by the banking industry "if you have the wrong politics." 

He's also continued to champion so-called "fair access" laws — which bar banks from discontinuing service to legal businesses — on the Senate Banking Committee. 

Vance's new role as the Republican vice presidential nominee also puts more pressure on the reelection of Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the Senate Banking Committee chairman. Brown, already facing a tough reelection campaign in Ohio against Republican used car salesman Bernie Moreno, could see a headwind due to Vance's nomination. 

The Biden-Harris campaign said that Vance would help Trump enact the Project 2025 plan, a document put out by a group of influential conservative leaders who could play large roles in a potential Trump administration. 

"Over the next three and a half months, we will spend every single day making the case between the two starkly contrasting visions Americans will choose between at the ballot box this November: the Biden-Harris ticket who's focused on uniting the country, creating opportunity for everyone, and lowering costs; or Trump-Vance — whose harmful agenda will take away Americans' rights, hurt the middle class, and make life more expensive — all while benefiting the ultra-rich and greedy corporations," the Biden-Harris campaign said in a statement.