Former President Donald Trump’s pick of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate brings much to the electoral table.

Turning 40 on Aug. 2, Vance is the first millennial running for national office from the two major parties. He’s roughly half the age of both Trump and President Joe Biden. A U.S. Marine who fought in the Iraq War, he’s the first veteran nominated by the two major parties since the late Sen. John McCain in 2008.

Crucially, he represents the vital Midwest Rust Belt, where this election will be decided, and which often has been neglected in national policy. In his acceptance speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Vance emphasized the economic and substance addiction problems of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Only Ohio, Vance’s home state, is not a battleground state, having voted for Trump by 8 points against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. The other three states voted for Trump the first time and Biden the second. In 2024, the winner of at least two of them will likely take the prize.

Vance started out as an anti-Trumper. But since being elected to the Senate in 2022, with Trump’s endorsement, he has moved in the former president’s direction on most issues, such as skepticism of foreign interventions. On April 12, Vance penned a New York Times op-ed, “The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up.” It argued the U.S. and its NATO allies were not producing enough arms, and Ukraine didn’t have enough troops, to beat Russia. It concluded, “The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.”

This editorial board has long warned against foreign entanglements and generally appreciates a more reluctant approach to foreign policy. On the economy, Vance always has aligned with Trump in favoring large cuts in taxes and regulations. If he makes it back to the Oval Office, Trump by himself could repeal hundreds of Biden’s regulatory executive orders.

Unfortunately, Vance also favors tariffs and higher government-mandated minimum wages, Trump has mentioned President McKinley as a model of paying for government using high tariffs instead of income taxes. He, and Vance, should know that caused the recession of 1899-1900.

The economic populism advocated by Vance is a repudiation of the market-oriented approach of the GOP since Reagan. We can only hope that this populism is more about posturing than policy. This we know: markets work and government meddling of the sort advocated by Vance distorts more than it helps.

On immigration, in his speech Vance favored being tougher on the border and legal immigration. He noted his wife, Usha, was “the daughter of South Asian immigrants.” They came here legally from India in the 1980s and teach in California universities in San Diego, where she grew up.

“[W]hen we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms,” he said. That sounds fine, but Vance, like Trump, has also long had a tendency to scapegoat immigrants for problems created by domestic policy decisions. This includes his blaming of immigrants for high housing costs and his assertions that immigrants are taking jobs from native-born Americans.

The fact is that the American economy needs and on balance benefits from expanded immigration. The key is to expand opportunities for legal immigration. Anything short of that will only yield more illegal immigration.

Stylistically, in contrast to Trump’s bombast, Vance’s speech was Midwest Nice. He even grew up in a town called Middleton, which he called one of the “forgotten communities.” Successful politics is about balance. And perhaps Trump will find success this November as a result of his vice presidential pick. Alas, we can only encourage Trump and Vance to read some Milton Friedman, ditch the populist policy ideas and recommit the GOP to capitalism and free markets.

- Los Angeles Daily News