Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Donald Trump’s newly chosen running mate, has made a shift from the Trump critic he was when he first entered politics to the loyalist he is today. It was a shift both in style and substance: Now, on topics as disparate as trade and Ukraine, Vance is closely aligned with Trump.

Here’s a look at where the senator stands on the issues that will most likely dominate the campaign ahead and, should Trump and Vance win in November, their years in the White House.

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Abortion

Vance opposes abortion rights, even in the case of incest or rape, but says there should be exceptions for cases when the mother’s life is in danger. He praised the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. As he ran for Senate in 2022, a headline on the issues section of his campaign website read simply: “Ban Abortion.”

That said, Vance, like Trump, opposes a national abortion ban, saying the issue should now be left to the states. “Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable,” he said in an interview with USA Today Network in October 2022.

Ukraine

Vance has been one of the leading opponents of U.S. support for Ukraine in the war with Russia. “I think it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine,” he said in a podcast interview with Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser and longtime ally. “I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

He led the battle in the Senate, unsuccessfully, to block a $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine. “I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war,” he wrote in an opinion essay for The New York Times early this year challenging President Joe Biden’s stance on the war. “Mr. Biden has failed to articulate even basic facts about what Ukraine needs and how this aid will change the reality on the ground.”

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Immigration

Immigration was the subject of Vance’s first advertisements in his 2022 campaign for the Senate in Ohio. While most ads are written by consultants, Vance said he wrote this one himself: “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans,” he says, looking straight into the camera. “With more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Vance’s views on immigration largely echo Trump. He wants to finish construction of the border wall and proclaimed that he would “oppose every attempt to grant amnesty” to immigrants who arrived here illegally. He favors what he called a merit-based system for immigrants seeking to settle here.

Vance argues that immigrants in the country illegally are a source of cheap labor that undercuts wages for American-born workers in states such as Ohio. “If you cannot hire illegal migrants to staff your hotels, then you have to go to one of the 7 million prime-age American men who are out of the labor force and find some way to reengage them.”

Jan. 6

“I think the election was stolen from Trump,” Vance said during the Republican primary for his Ohio seat, putting him firmly in the camp of election deniers. Vance dismissed the idea that Trump played a role in instigating the demonstrators who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And he said that if he had been Trump’s vice president then, he would have bowed to Trump’s demand and rejected electoral votes from several swing states won by Biden in 2020.

And he is skeptical that former Vice President Mike Pence, who hid in a stairway as members of the mob streamed through the hallways, was in danger because he refused to block, in his role as president of the Senate, the vote validating Biden’s victory.

“I think politics and politics people like to really exaggerate things from time to time,” he said on CNN. “Look, Jan. 6 was a bad day. It was a riot. But the idea that Donald Trump endangered anyone’s lives when he told them to protest peacefully, it’s just absurd.”

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Tariffs

Vance has called for “broad-based tariffs, especially on goods coming in from China,” because they pose an unfair threat to American jobs and commerce, he said. “We need to protect American industries from all of the competition,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

In that stance, Vance is again largely in line with Trump, who has proposed a 10% across-the-board tariff on goods coming into the country. That idea has come under fire from Democrats and many economists, who warn that it would be inflationary. But Vance rejected the criticism as overblown.

He said in the CBS interview that applying tariffs is like saying “we’re going to penalize you for using slave labor in China and importing that stuff in the United States.” And, he added: “You end up making more stuff in America, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio and in Michigan.”

Climate

Vance has said climate change is not a threat and has said he is skeptical of the scientific consensus that warming of the Earth’s atmosphere is caused by human activity. “It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia,” he told the American Leadership Forum. Vance is a strong supporter of the oil and gas industry — which is dominant in his home state — and has voiced opposition to wind and solar energy, and electric vehicles.

Middle East

Vance has been a steadfast supporter of Israel throughout the country’s war in the Gaza Strip, defending its wartime policies in the face of growing criticism over the civilian death toll.

When members of the Senate considered a bill providing military aide to both Israel and Ukraine, Vance led a group of senators proposing legislation to send money only to Israel. Echoing the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he said the country needed to eliminate Hamas after the terrorist group’s deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“Israel has an achievable objective,” Vance wrote in a memo he circulated among Senate Republicans before introducing the bill. “Ukraine does not.”

Vance assailed Biden for delaying the shipment of weapons to Israel as tensions grew between the White House and Netanyahu’s government.

He acknowledged the civilian casualties in Gaza — “our heart certainly goes out to them,” he said — but he maintained that the blame for that lies not with Israel, but with Hamas.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Adam Nagourney/Sarah Silbiger
c.2024 The New York Times Company