ArcaMax

JD Vance has served admirably as Donald Trump's vice president and has been a true asset to the administration. Right now, he's favored to be the next Republican nominee for president when 2028 rolls around. But there are many other viable contenders.

That's why his latest deep-dive interview on his views on the economy is highly disturbing.

In Vance's interview last week with The Daily Wire, he sounded much more like a Mitt Romney, big-government RINO than a Trump or Ronald Reagan.

Decide for yourself. Here are some of Vance's misguided views on economics and the future of the GOP:

"Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the 1980s because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity."

"If you look at modern Britain and the result of Margaret Thatcher's policies, you would say that her policies actually got Britain further away from that ideal and not closer to that ideal."

"I think that meritocracy can steal from us a sense of what really, really matters."

"When Donald Trump ran for president the first time, the idea of tariffs on imported goods was a heresy in the GOP. It is now the baseline position that virtually every Republican politician adopts."

"If you turn economic development (i.e., prosperity) into a sort of idol, then you end up sacrificing a lot of the things that matter most."

"American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman. I think that's obviously a good thing."

This is anti-free-market, big government gobbledygook. Here's just one "laissez-faire economic truism" that JD should learn: Individuals can always spend their own money better than the government.

Hamilton had his gifts, for sure, but Hamilton believed in a far more powerful federal government than Thomas Jefferson, who correctly wanted a small federal government, and the states to have most of the governing power.

That's why we have the Ninth and 10th Amendments -- power resides with the states and the people. Do Republicans want a new era of even bigger and more intrusive government?

Who disparages Friedman -- Reagan's favorite economist and perhaps the most ardent spokesman for free markets since Adam Smith? Friedman was the leading spokesman for school choice, limited government and personal freedom. One of his most famous books was called "Free to Choose." Who criticizes Thatcher?

We already have a big government party in the Democrats that is increasingly leaning toward socialism. The GOP must be the party of a lean and efficient and less burdensome federal government. If Vance doesn't believe in those core principles of freedom and prosperity, maybe he's in the wrong party.

========

Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and the cofounder of Unleash Prosperity, which advocates for education freedom for all children.

Copyright 2026 Creators Syndicate Inc.