{"id":47165,"date":"2026-08-15T19:03:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T14:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=47165"},"modified":"2026-08-15T19:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T14:03:31","slug":"trump-changed-republican-economics-now-the-gop-has-to-figure-out-how-to-sell-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=47165","title":{"rendered":"Trump changed Republican economics. Now the GOP has to figure out how to sell it."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.politico.com\/5d\/4d\/c7553a1348d8a5befb739908e048\/vance-35889.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Capitalism is getting a rebrand on the right.<\/p>\n<p>Josh Hawley <a href=\"https:\/\/firstthings.com\/the-american-covenants-answer-to-ai\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u>calls it<\/u><\/a> \u201ccovenant economics.\u201d Marco Rubio <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/politics-society\/2019\/11\/06\/marco-rubio-promotes-common-good-capitalism-catholic-university\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u>termed it<\/u><\/a> \u201ccommon good capitalism.\u201d And JD Vance talks about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2026\/aug\/10\/book-review-communion-finding-way-back-faith\/?srsltid=AfmBOopWVRgGMVCkWfUNufvEBrtcKdy8t6jsQgl-dmGDtPH1qS6RQjfB\" target=\"_blank\"><u>dignity, not gross domestic product<\/u><\/a>, as the measure of economic progress.<\/p>\n<p>The language they use is different, but the heart of their argument is the same: The free-market-rules orthodoxy that dominated the Republican Party for decades has failed. Fixing it requires getting a lot more comfortable with federal intervention, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/06\/03\/trum-tariffs-could-narrow-scope-00949152\" target=\"_blank\"><u>tariffs to protect domestic industry<\/u><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/04\/trump-accounts-economy-00986998\" target=\"_blank\"><u>seed accounts for newborns<\/u><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/08\/22\/trump-says-the-government-now-owns-10-billion-of-intel-00520707\" target=\"_blank\"><u>government stakes in corporations<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The new vocabulary attempts to clothe those kinds of policies \u2014 which would have been anathema to Republicans only a decade ago \u2014 in the familiar conservative language of faith, family and fairness. It\u2019s an increasingly existential bet that touting the party\u2019s new economic vision is how Republicans hold on to the coalition President Donald Trump built for 2028 and beyond, even without the president on the ballot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe answer as to why the party is beginning to finally shift directions is: voters. That\u2019s the one word answer,\u201d Hawley, who has been championing these economic policies <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalaffairs.com\/publications\/detail\/rediscovering-justice\" target=\"_blank\"><u>for more than a decade<\/u><\/a>, said in an interview.<\/p>\n<p>An older generation of Republicans spent the past decade hoping Trump\u2019s penchant for economic interventionism would prove an aberration from the party\u2019s tradition, after which the GOP would course correct. But the small field of potential successors to the president increasingly suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>Vance, Trump\u2019s heir apparent, as senator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/07\/15\/jd-vance-agenda-policies-00168467\" target=\"_blank\"><u>pushed for<\/u><\/a> tighter regulations on everything from big banks to railroads and proposed raising taxes on university endowments, policies that under Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush might have gotten him drummed out of the party.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLooking at all the rising stars in the Republican Party, whether it\u2019s the vice president or Secretary Rubio, we have people like [Sens.] Jim Banks, Bernie Moreno, a lot of people who are coming in to fill the Senate who really fundamentally understand the issues that Americans are facing, the importance of workers, that kind of thing,\u201d U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2026\/05\/08\/jamieson-greer-trade-tariffs-profile-00910570?utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication&amp;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_source=RSS_Feed\" target=\"_blank\"><u>shepherded the president\u2019s tariff agenda<\/u><\/a> for the last year and a half, told POLITICO.<\/p>\n<p>Or, as a senior White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, put it: \u201cThe train is coming down on the tracks, and if you&#8217;re standing in the way, you get run over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Spokespeople for Vance and Rubio did not respond to requests for comment, while White House spokesperson Kush Desai framed the administration\u2019s economic posture as \u201cimplementing traditional free market policies that do work \u2014 like deregulation and tax cuts \u2014 while rectifying longtime America-Last policies that have left Americans behind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For now, the champions of the old guard \u2014 who hew to free market philosophers such as Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand \u2014 concede they have no one to counter what they see as the creeping socialism infiltrating mainstream Republican discourse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the bright-line definition of socialism is owning the means of production, then yeah, [the president is] there,\u201d said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former chief economist on George W. Bush\u2019s Council of Economic Advisers who now leads the conservative American Action Forum. \u201cThe old conservatives \u2014 the people like me, literally \u2014 Bush was the end of that. It\u2019s been gone for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the president\u2019s economic populism increasingly hardens into the GOP\u2019s post-Trump governing philosophy, a vocal, well-monied cadre of old right Republicans is making a last-ditch effort to claw the party back toward its free market roots, a spat that burst into public view last week.<\/p>\n<p>A tiff over whether young Americans should stop complaining about $20 burritos \u2014 which <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JDVance\/status\/2085000102905597966?s=20\" target=\"_blank\"><u>Vance weighed in on<\/u><\/a> \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2026\/aug\/6\/burrito-price-fight-splits-gop-midterms-loom-affordability\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u>quickly morphed into<\/u><\/a> a broader argument over whether conservatives were taking voters\u2019 economic anxieties seriously enough. And influential MAGA podcaster Jack Posobiec sparked backlash from old guard Republicans after <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RichardHanania\/status\/2083697613308875245\" target=\"_blank\"><u>declaring himself \u201cnot a capitalist\u201d<\/u><\/a> in critiquing Kevin O\u2019Leary, the Canadian businessman who is an archetypal punching bag for the New Right.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey see the Kevin O\u2019Learys with the $2 million watches, and we wonder why they\u2019re cheering Mangione,\u201d Posobiec said, referring to Luigi Mangione, the man <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/luigi-mangione-expected-plead-guilty-new-york-federal-case-rcna592221\" target=\"_blank\"><u>accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson<\/u><\/a>, allegedly driven by his frustrations with corporate greed. \u201cIf we don&#8217;t adopt some of these [populist] policies, we are going to straight up get a socialist revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The GOP\u2019s economic shift comes amid the rapid ascent of progressives and democratic socialists like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/11\/04\/zohran-mamdani-wins-mayor-new-york-city-00634476\" target=\"_blank\"><u>New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/u><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/08\/05\/el-sayed-wins-michigan-senate-primary-stevens-01025170\" target=\"_blank\"><u>Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed<\/u><\/a>. Their brand of left-wing populism appeals to many of the voters that Trump won over and who the next GOP nominee for president will need.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of daylight between \u2014 and there hasn\u2019t been for a decade \u2014 [Sen.] Bernie [Sanders] supporters and MAGA supporters. Bernie and the president just have a little bit different ideas on how to deliver those results, but there\u2019s a lot of overlap,\u201d said Alex Bruesewitz, an outside adviser to Trump. \u201cWhen the Republican message for a decade or longer has been, \u2018Work harder, I pulled myself up by the bootstraps,\u2019 that\u2019s not a particularly effective message to these people. They don\u2019t want to hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As blue collar voters <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2023\/11\/04\/new-republican-party-working-class-coalition-00122822\" target=\"_blank\"><u>migrated toward the GOP<\/u><\/a> over the last decade, they brought with them economic priorities that often sat uneasily alongside the party&#8217;s traditional free-market agenda: protecting domestic jobs, raising wages and making it possible for a family to afford a home and children on a working-class income. And their economic anxieties are increasingly shared by white collar voters, too, who are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.minneapolisfed.org\/article\/2025\/what-happened-to-the-college-wage-premium\" target=\"_blank\"><u>grappling with stagnating wages<\/u><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/05\/19\/ai-hiring-slowdown-skilled-trade-workers.html\" target=\"_blank\"><u>fears about jobs being gobbled up by artificial intelligence<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Conservative populists believe they must now figure out how to cement the gains Trump has made with his new base, while expanding it to reach others who also feel adrift in today\u2019s economy. Doing so, they believe, is the only way their party will win in 2028 and beyond.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Republicans pick up five working-class voters for every one country-club tax cutter they lose,\u201d said Oren Cass, founder and chief economist of the conservative populist think tank American Compass. As that happens, Republicans acquire \u201cmore constituents in the Republican Party pushing Republicans to go further toward positions that are going to attract even more of those people,\u201d while Democrats lose \u201cexactly the people who used to keep it grounded and become an ever more progressive bubbled enclave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is some precedent for Republicans trying to pair free market economics with an affirmative role for government. Bush\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov\/news\/releases\/2002\/04\/20020430.html\" target=\"_blank\"><u>\u201ccompassionate conservatism\u201d embraced<\/u><\/a> federal intervention to pursue a host of social goals, including Medicare prescription drug coverage, \u201cNo Child Left Behind\u201d and channeling public money through faith-based and other community organizations to fight poverty, drug addiction and homelessness. It even floated a path to \u201cearned citizenship\u201d for undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n<p>But Bush-era Republicans still generally accepted the idea of free market dominance, while the populists of today are more willing to intervene in the market to produce the outcomes they believe will benefit families, workers and communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCompassionate conservatives were not as infatuated with elite bureaucracies that could implement the common good through the executive\u201d as today\u2019s crop of populists, said Tim Chapman, president of former Vice President Mike Pence&#8217;s Advancing American Freedom public policy advocacy organization.<\/p>\n<p>The two sides also disagree over who defines the common good in the first place. Traditional conservatives argue that empowering Washington to decide which economic outcomes best serve families and communities risks bigfooting the judgment of individuals and local communities.<\/p>\n<p>That conservative old guard has trained much of their ire on Vance, even as Rubio has spent recent years making similar arguments, including in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaelposner\/2019\/12\/12\/marco-rubios-common-good-capitalism-is-just-what-we-need\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u>his 2019 \u201ccommon good capitalism\u201d speech<\/u><\/a> at Catholic University, a disparity that reflects both Vance\u2019s pole position as well as the factional fault lines within the GOP.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf [the debate] was actually about JD Vance&#8217;s economic positioning, we&#8217;d be talking also about Marco Rubio, we&#8217;d be talking about Josh Hawley,\u201d said one Vance ally, granted anonymity to discuss the focus on the vice president\u2019s economic vision. \u201cSo it\u2019s like, why all of a sudden is this a problem?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also far less agreement within the New Right over how far that \u201ccommon good\u201d principle should extend. Many conservatives who have embraced some of the Trump administration\u2019s government interventions \u2014 such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/11\/29\/the-big-dreams-behind-trump-accounts-00666831\" target=\"_blank\"><u>Trump accounts<\/u><\/a>, which provide tax-advantaged investments for children with a $1,000 seed deposit \u2014 are uncomfortable with others, like the government\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/08\/22\/trump-says-the-government-now-owns-10-billion-of-intel-00520707\" target=\"_blank\"><u>9.9 percent stake in the chip maker Intel<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The New Right has a governing principle for intervention \u2014 what is in the \u201ccommon good\u201d or, as Greer prefers, the \u201cnational interest\u201d \u2014 but they have yet to define any crisp limiting principle on that intervention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want the market to do as much of this as possible,\u201d Greer said. \u201cWe want capitalism to do as much as possible, but where capitalism or the market have a failure in this, then we want to make sure that around the edges you&#8217;re doing the necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The challenge for these economic populists looking to preserve and expand the Trump coalition is how to persuade a generation of Republicans raised to believe that government intervention is inherently suspect that their policies are consistent with conservative principles.<\/p>\n<p>Often, that has meant using faith-based language familiar to religious voters. Greer, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, cites Brigham Young in saying that the church should \u201cbuy of nobody else but their own faithful brethren.\u201d Hawley, an evangelical Christian, uses the word \u201ccovenant\u201d to reference the Puritans\u2019 belief in a moral \u201cjustice price\u201d for goods and fair wages for labor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you put it in terms of, \u2018Well, we need more government regulation,\u2019 [evangelicals are] going to say, \u2018Well, I don&#8217;t know about that.\u2019 But if you say, \u2018Well, this is actually about what is right and wrong. It&#8217;s about being pro-family,\u2019 then they say, \u2018Well, that&#8217;s for sure true. I totally agree with that,\u2019\u201d Hawley said. \u201cSome of this is evangelicals rediscovering our own long history, frankly, of economic engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all part of an effort to show that this new economic stance is inherently moral and, in many ways, derived from faith-based teachings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs the economy made for man, or is man made for the economy?,\u201d said Andrew Walker, dean of the school of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. \u201cYou have the Hawleys and the Rubios who are saying, what\u2019s the worth of a GDP if we have men who are addicted to pornography and strung out on drugs and they\u2019re not marrying, but oh, great, we\u2019ve brought in all the H1Bs to stimulate economic growth?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And there is evidence that voters respond better or worse depending on the way they\u2019re presented rhetorically. <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/713144\/americans-view-capitalism-socialism-free-enterprise.aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><u>A recent Gallup poll found<\/u><\/a> that while 81 percent of Americans view \u201cfree enterprise\u201d positively, only 54 percent feel the same way about \u201ccapitalism,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/694835\/image-capitalism-slips.aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><u>down from 61 percent in 2010<\/u><\/a>. (An even narrower 39 percent feel positively about \u201csocialism.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>For all the disagreement over what to call the new economic vision \u2014 and how far its logic should extend \u2014 there is considerably more agreement over its basic direction.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond the politicians likely to carry the party\u2019s mantle in 2028, a younger generation of conservative staffers, operatives and policy thinkers is also coming up in a Republican Party where skepticism of the old free market consensus is increasingly the starting point, and no longer an insurgent position.<\/p>\n<p>That generational shift suggests that the president\u2019s departure from traditional GOP economics could prove more durable than Trump himself. Heading toward 2028, the question is increasingly not whether Trump disrupted the party\u2019s old economic consensus, but whether there is anyone left with the political appetite \u2014 or cache \u2014 to put it back together.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t see anyone who is saying I want to go back and run on the platform of traditional conservatism, or even a Bush version of it,\u201d Holtz-Eakin said. \u201cI personally believe that \u2018this too shall pass\u2019 \u2014 though it\u2019s going to take a long time for it to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Capitalism is getting a rebrand on the right. Josh Hawley calls it \u201ccovenant economics.\u201d Marco Rubio termed it \u201ccommon good capitalism.\u201d And JD Vance talks about dignity, not gross domestic product, as the measure of economic progress. The language they use is different, but the heart of their argument is the same: The free-market-rules orthodoxy&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static.politico.com\/5d\/4d\/c7553a1348d8a5befb739908e048\/vance-35889.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}