JD Vance spruiks his ‘American boy’ story

Republicans’ newly minted VP candidate has vowed to fight for American jobs and curb illegal immigration in a speech designed to win over the millions in the rust belt states.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance with wife Usha Chilukuri Vance on stage on the third day of the Republican National Convention. Picture: Getty Images

Republicans’ newly minted vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has vowed to fight for American jobs, curb illegal immigration and rein in US militarism abroad in a speech designed to win over the millions in the rust belt states Don­ald Trump needs to win in November to return to the White House.

The 39-year-old senator from Ohio launched himself on to the global political stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) in a speech high on anti-establishment rhetoric and fawning praise for Mr Trump, who picked him as his running mate only days earlier, and low on policy detail.

“Tonight, I stand here humbled, I officially accept your nomination to be vice-president of the USA,” he declared, prompting Mr Trump to rise to his feet amid chants of “JD, JD”.

With his mother seated alongside a smiling Mr Trump, Senator Vance strode on to the stage before a cheering party faithful festooned with Trump-Vance placards, cowboy hats, and American flags, at 9.45pm, providing Americans with the first glimpse of the man who could be their youngest vice-president since Richard Nixon in 1953.

In a speech that drew heavily on his meteoric rise from poverty in rural Ohio to Yale Law School, Senator Vance promised to fight for those Americans “cast aside by America’s ruling class in Washington”, blasting Joe Biden by name numerous times for supporting trade deals and wars that had ravaged rural and regional American families.

“Jobs were sent overseas, and our children were sent to war … Joe Biden screwed up and my community paid the price,” he said, promising should he win to “protect our wages and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens”.

“I promise you one more thing, people of middle town Ohio, I will be a vice-president who never forgets where he came from.”

Senator Vance was introduced by his wife, 38-year-old Usha Chilukuri Vance, a daughter of Indian immigrants, whom he met at Yale, after a parade of Gold Star families addressed the crowd, decrying Mr Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which led to 13 deaths of American service members and triggered the biggest yet collapse of the President’s approval rating.

Senator Vance, elected in 2022 after gaining fame as the author of the best-selling 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy, shied away from concrete policy proposals or the strident isolationism in inter­national affairs that has worried allies and traditional Republicans, sticking instead to the economic populism that’s come to define the MAGA movement.

“We’re done importing foreign labour, we’re going to fight for American citizens, we’re going to fight for their good jobs and their good wages,” he said, aspiring to “stamp more products with that beautiful label Made in the USA”.

“Together we will make sure our allies will share in the burden of securing world peace; no more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer,” he said in his only reference to foreign policy in the 37-minute speech.

In a nod to significant divisions within the Republican party, the establishment wing of which once championed an interventionist foreign policy, high immigration and free trade, Senator Vance declared “disagreements made us stronger”.

“We have a big tent in this party, from everything from nat­ional security to economic policy, but my message to you my fellow Republicans is we love this country and we are united to win,” he said, adding that “disagreements make us stronger”.

The Biden-Harris campaign blasted the senator as “unprepared, unqualified, and willing to do anything Donald Trump demands” in a statement released immediately after he finished speaking, casting him as the “poster boy” of “Project 2025”, a policy platform assembled by a Republican-aligned conservative think tank that Democrats have sought to demonise in the presidential campaign.

As he has every night so far of the four-day convention, Mr Trump entered the Fiserv Forum at 8pm local time as Pavarotti’s and James Brown’s It’s a Man’s World boomed over the raucous applause, taking a seat to watch his potential heir to the MAGA movement give the most important speech of his short political career.