Former president Donald Trump’s choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee reflects the ascendancy of the party’s populist economic wing — and the choice is alarming traditional conservative policymakers and elite donors who opposed the pick.
Vance has suggested a break with the Republican Party’s economic orthodoxy of the last several decades on a range of policy issues, including unions, antitrust, trade and taxes, even making comments that appear at odds with Trump, who already scrambled the party’s ideology.
The first-term senator has embraced a more active role for government intervention in the economy than most Republicans, emerging as a leader of a minority faction among GOP senators that also includes Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). Vance has praised President Biden’s antitrust crusader at the Federal Trade…