The one that interests me most is JD Vance because he appears to be the closest to the working class populist MAGA appeal. JD Vance has come out strongly against the post-WWII international order, saying that it does not serve the working class well, and proposing that we put something else in its place. What he appears to have in mind is a much more nationalist vision, with a focus on each country as a self-contained unit having as little as possible to do with the outside world.
Two things are notable about Vance's vision. Once is that it is a departure from the Republican Party's old ideology of economic royalism. Vance does not think that either the free market or capitalists are infallible, and he is willing to allow government intervention on behalf of the working class. The other is that it is a conservative vision in the sense of favoring depth over breadth in social commitment. In fact, he appears to believe that the working class is best served by strong social cohesion, and that he sees breadth as a threat to depth and therefore to be excluded.
But how far does this go?
Hershel Walker often sounded like a sort of caricature of this viewpoint -- proposing a sort of hermetic seal around the United States that would stop China from breathing our clean air and keep China's pollution out of the US. Vance, I have no doubt, is more sophisticated than that. But his vision sounds like a milder version of the same. But a lot is unclear.
One thing that is clear is that his vision is one of zero immigration. No family migration, no refugees admitted, no asylum claims. Afghans who put their lives on the line assisting the US who face torture and execution by the Taliban will just have to find somewhere else to go. And, so far as I can tell, no naturalization law, no permanent legal residents, no green cards, no work visa, no student visas, no admission of anyone except (presumably) foreign diplomats and tourists. All non-citizens should be expelled. Any work that citizens are unwilling to do can be automated.
He extends this view to Europe, urging Europeans to refuse admission to any non-Europeans and to expel "the enemy within." Certainly Elon Musk has maintained the importance of each country keeping its own distinctive character. Vance appears to agree.
This raises a number of questions. Nationalists love to mock the liberal vision of all different ethnic groups living side by side in harmony and equality as impractical. But the nationalist vision of neat lines across the map with only one ethnic group one each side of the line and no moving across is not all that practical either. In any event, it is out of the question in the US. At most, we can halt all future immigration and push heavy measures for assimilation. How far does Vance (or Musk) propose to take this in Europe? Clearly he/they want to halt and reverse all non-European immigration. Are there prepared to tolerate immigration within Europe, or should European countries harden their borders against each other as well? Both men are notably hostile to the European Union, but is that just because it is friendly toward non-European immigration and other forms of "wokeness," or do they consider maintaining sharp border within Europe to be important? And have they thought it through at all?
I don't think Vance's vision goes so far as to say no trade. Even Trump has not formally committed to a policy of autarchy, although he appears to think we should never have a trade deficit with any country anywhere. I assume Vance is more sophisticated than that. But he clearly wants much less international trade. In particular, he emphasizes the importance of everyone having their own manufacturing with good paying jobs. Again, Vance is thinking mostly about the US which is, after all, a very large country. One wonders if he would approve of much smaller European countries having more internal trade that would at least allow each country to specialize in a different kind of manufacturing, rather than require each country to go it alone. (Maybe even some kind of common market).
But clearly he wants a lot of heavy industry and manufacturing with good-paying jobs in the US. One gathers he is open to manufacturing jobs being union jobs and offering good health insurance and defined benefit pensions. All this is a clear break with traditional economic royalism. (More on that later).
This economic vision is closely tied to a social vision, mostly of increased social cohesion. Central to this vision is that raising male wages will raise the marriage rate. It assumes that women will be more inclined to marry and less inclined to divorce if men have good paying jobs -- especially if women don't have good paying jobs. It is also hard not to see this as a way of discouraging college attendance, since it seems clear that the MAGA crowd sees college as something that makes people more liberal and therefore an evil to be prevented. It assumes that men will be less inclined to go to college if they can get a good paying manufacturing job with benefits right out of high school. (How to keep women out of college is less clear. The offer of jobs in the garment industry is unlikely to be much of an inducement).
And, in fairness to Vance, one can see other advantages in social cohesion here. A manufacturing job that offers employment for men's full work life can promote social cohesion in many ways. It offers enduring friendships with coworkers that may encourage association outside of work, either doing things together as individuals or in an organized fashion. This is especially true if coworkers also belong to a union together. And offering a long-term job encourages the workforce to stay in the same place and build strong neighborhoods, and stronger commitments to a long-term church, school, etc.
There is an obvious flaw in Vance's criticism of the liberal post-war international order in favor of a more cohesive, more nationalistic view of each country as a self-contained unit, preserving its unique character, admitting no immigrants, and building its own industrial base. Such a system can flourish only if it follows another key precept of the liberal international order -- no redrawing of borders. If countries make a habit of invading each other and annexing each others' territory, it is hard to see how each country can maintain its unique, stable, cohesive character. People in border areas will either see their nationality change quite regularly, or else will be regularly ethnically cleansed to make way for some other ethnically cohesive, but geographically larger, country. Either way, it is hard to see how the interests of either social cohesion or the working class would be served by countries invading each other and annexing territory.
I suppose Vance might say he agrees that countries should not invade their neighbors or annex territory. But if that is the case, why is he so dead set against assisting Ukraine when it is being invaded by Russia, and why does he appear to support the US invading Greenland? Here I suppose he might say that he likes the no invading part and is just opposed to alliances, which undermine a country's sovereignty by forcing it to other countries' interests into account.
Or he might say that he likes the no-invading rule but doesn't see it as our place to enforce it.* By this standard, the no-invading rule would stand, but each country would be on its own if actually invaded. The result of that would be predictable. Each country would have little choice but to build up its military to defend against invasion. That would tend to promote domestic manufacturing, but at some cost to the standard of living.
Or, he might be honest and say that he favors invasions, but only by countries like Russia that uphold illiberal values.
*Or he might say that if I am so committed to countries not invading each other, what about the US invading Iraq and didn't that violate that rule. And I agree, our invasion of Iraq did violate the no-invading rule. I opposed it for that very reason.
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