2025-04-09
11 分钟The Economist. Hi, John Pridow here.
I host Checks and Balance, our podcast on US politics.
Welcome to Editors' Picks.
Here's an article from the latest edition of The Economist handpicked by our team and read aloud.
I hope you enjoy it.
The safe choice for Vice President was not JD Vance.
He arrived on Donald Trump's presidential ticket with little political experience and plenty of baggage.
During his two years in the Senate,
some senior colleagues found the Ohio freshman's strident opposition to Republican policy orthodoxy presumptuous.
And more than a few Republican lawmakers and donors still privately acknowledge they would have preferred someone else.
Yet the Vice President, the third youngest in American history,
has proved adept at a role that often ends up as a political dead end.
And Mr Vance, seen by America's allies as a divisive figure,
is casting himself as a uniter of his party's fractious factions.
He argues that he was uniquely placed to bridge the gap between the techno-optimist and populist right MAGA tribes.
Both our working people, our populists and our innovators have the same enemy,
Mr Vance said during remarks at the American Dynamism Summit in Washington on March 18th.
That enemy is globalisation and cheap labour.
He argued that restricting the flow of people and goods
while loosening regulations and lightening the tax burden of companies and investors would encourage innovation and benefit workers and entrepreneurs alike.