How Iraq, Nafta and a Rust Belt upbringing shaped JD Vance’s worldview

The politics of Donald Trump’s running mate can be explained by retracing his steps

Ohio Senator JD Vance takes to the stage with his wife Usha during a rally in his home town of Middletown, Ohio, in July. AP

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There is a lot of love for JD Vance on the street where he grew up in Middletown, Ohio.

“JD is for the American people – he’s going to be for the American people [because] he is not jaded yet,” says Jerry Dobbins, who for more than three decades has lived a couple of doors down from the house where the Republican vice presidential hopeful was raised.

Mr Vance, who is also a senator for Ohio, and his running mate Donald Trump have made “America first” a major campaign focus. Should the Trump-Vance ticket win November’s presidential election, it would probably result in stark repercussions for Nato, Ukraine and Palestinians under near-daily attack by Israel in Gaza.

Despite growing up in America’s heartland, Mr Vance’s worldview as a conservative non-interventionist has been undeniably shaped by global events over the years.

For decades, the Armco steel plant to the east of downtown Middletown provided thousands of locals – including Mr Vance’s grandfather – with a secure, middle-class life.

But by 1983, the year before Mr Vance was born, Armco – later known as AK Steel and from 2020, Cliffs – reported a $672.5 million loss ($2.1 billion in today’s money). More broadly, America’s industrial Midwest was crumbling in the face of falling demand for manufactured products and cheaper imported steel from Japan.

When Mr Vance was growing up, jobs that had fed families across Middletown started to disappear. Loans and mortgages went unpaid, drug use soared and families – his included – fell apart.

Car factories that once fuelled life in Middletown, Detroit and beyond moved to Mexico and elsewhere to take advantage of cheaper labour. Then, in the 1990s, the North American Free Trade Association (Nafta) – which many in manufacturing blamed for the loss of production and jobs – came into force.

As a young man on the streets of Middletown, none of this would have been lost on Mr Vance.

But for Scotty Robertson, who grew up in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, not far from where much of Mr Vance’s 2016 best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy is set, the Ohio senator's portrayal of this region misses the mark.

“I felt like it was an exploitation of people who had suffered addiction and of Appalachian families in poverty, when in fact, he’s not from Appalachia,” he says.

“I think that it’s not a true representation of my family and people I knew. To represent the people as JD Vance has, as drug-addicted, poor, lazy people, is not true and extremely unfair.”

Mr Robertson sees a host of troubles for the wider world should Mr Vance and Mr Trump enter the White House next January.

“My concern is that there would be a walking away from Nato and long-standing alliances in favour of allowing dictators like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping to gain territory that increases their ability to continue their dictatorial reigns,” he says.

“If Donald Trump and JD Vance get elected, it’s not even a question – we will be giving Ukraine to Putin.”

But Mr Dobbins disagrees.

“Trump would have stood up to Putin,” he says. “There’s nobody standing up to him now.”

A visit by The National to the Butler County Republican Party office, as well as emails and calls to the party seeking comment for this story, went unanswered.

Mr Vance’s worldview has also been shaped by America’s wars in the Middle East.

For six months beginning in late 2006, he served as a public affairs writer at Ain Al Asad airbase in Iraq’s Anbar province. Amid the most furious fighting of the war, Mr Vance’s job was to work with the visiting international media and write occasional articles.

But despite his time in Iraq, he has written since that his tour there largely turned him into a non-interventionist who is now uninterested in “spreading democracy” around the world.

The consequences of that for Ukraine, Europe and other US allies could be significant.

Last February, Mr Vance suggested that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia to end the war. He has also said that helping Ukraine has placed a major burden on the US taxpayer – although experts say that is untrue.

“The vast bulk of support that the US has sent [to Ukraine] is paid to US defence contractors with US employees who are part of the US tax system,” says Dr Robert Farley, a lecturer at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. “And the total amount sent thus far is a fraction of the US defence budget.”

A Trump-Vance election win could also be devastating for other American allies.

“The Republican Party is divided on Nato but with Trump and Vance in charge, it is likely that multilateral security efforts will lose resources,” says Dr Farley.

“This means that Europeans, if they wish to maintain the same level of security, will need to increase their defence outlays and possibly rethink how their forces are currently organised and deployed.”

As a staunch supporter of Israel, Mr Vance is also unlikely to put the needs of desperate Palestinians in Gaza first.

Mr Vance has said that his Christian faith is among the reasons for his support for Israel, but for Michael Bailey, a pastor at Faith United Church in Middletown, the senator has not displayed much in the way of Christian values. Having locals align themselves with Mr Trump’s caustic speech, he says, is disappointing.

“His wife was a registered Democrat … it just blows my mind,” Mr Bailey says. “There ain’t no doubt in my mind he’s being used.”

However, reflecting a growing nationwide sentiment, Mr Bailey says that when Kamala Harris announced she was running for president, many people in his Middletown network were immediately energised.

“It was just a burst of fresh air. People got fired up,” he says. "This is the way it should be.”