JD Vance Tries to Bridge the Divide Between Tech and Populism

The vice president talked up American innovation at a summit organized by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

JD Vance

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Vice President JD Vance tried during a speech Tuesday to mend the fracture between two clashing factions of the MAGA coalition: techno-optimists like Elon Musk and populists like Steve Bannon.

“I’d ask my friends, both on the tech optimist side and on the populist side, not to see the failure of the logic of globalization as a failure of innovation,” Vance said at the American Dynamism Summit. “Indeed, I’d say that globalization’s hunger for cheap labor is a problem — precisely because it’s been bad for innovation.

“The solution, I believe, is American innovation,” he added. “Because in the long run, it’s technology that increases the value of labor innovations.”