The Republican Party After Trump: National Conservatism and The Rejection of Globalism
National Conservatives seek to Promote Industrial Policy, a Subdued Foreign Policy, the Family, and Tradition.
“But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” — J.D. Vance, Republican Vice Presidential Nominee
Regardless of your views of former President Donald Trump, it is clear that he has fundamentally changed the Republican Party. As we approach the end of the 2024 Presidential campaign, with polls deadlocked, I wanted to take a step back and think about the future of the party most in flux right now.
In the 1980s, the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan was often referred to as consisting of a three-legged stool of Christian right/social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and foreign interventionists. However, in the last decade under Donald Trump, this stool has somewhat collapsed. The enormity of the Republican Party’s shift is perhaps best exemplified by Donald Trump’s current running mate: Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.
Vance first became well-known for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, but only when he was chosen as the Republican vice-presidential nominee did the national public become fully aware of his worldview and the growing movement that it represents in the Republican Party. While J.D. Vance’s vice-presidential nominee acceptance speech was filled with many of the normal paces of traditional convention speeches — an overview of his life story growing up in Ohio, the times he spent with his Mamaw, and sharp barbs at the opposing political side— in his speech, he also put forward a distinct and somewhat controversial vision of the future of Republican Party: National Conservatism.
Indeed, the National Conservatism movement has been slowly gaining influence amongst US and UK Conservatives with figures such as Vance, Republican Governor Ron Desantis, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and leader of the UK Reform party Nigel Farage speaking at its yearly conventions.
With National Conservatism’s adherents supporting unions and sectoral bargaining, national industrial policy, restrictions on immigration, a subdued foreign policy, and an expanded child tax credit, it can seem somewhat confusing what is behind this growing Republican coalition. These are squarely not the policies of Ronald Reagan. So what is National Conservatism and is it the future of the Republican Party?
What is National Conservatism?
The most fundamental aspect of National Conservatism is its commitment to the idea of the Nation. Rather than a commitment to a “rules-based liberal order,” which has characterized United States policy since WWII, National Conservatism seeks to reorient the United States and Western countries to view the world as constituted by individual nations, each pursuing its own individual interests. Each Nation consists of a “group of people with a shared history and a common future” and it is the job of the government and the Nation to protect and promote the interest of that group of people.
We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people.
— National Conservastim: Statement of Principles
Contrast this with a 1990 speech given by President George H. W. Bush following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
No peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbors… A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we've known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.
While National Conservatism does not reject alliances outright, it specifically opposes the influence of international organizations championed by figures like President Bush. Each country is a distinct Nation, with distinct peoples, and governments that should act primarily if not solely in the Nation’s interests.
This is perhaps best exemplified in former President Trump’s and J.D. Vance’s acrimony at US funding for the War in Ukraine and the desire to end the War as quickly as possible. In a speech at Quincy Institute's “A Foreign Policy for the Middle Class: Realism & Restraint Amid Global Conflict” Conference, Vance echoed:
I do not think that it is in America's interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine… We've done more than our fair share.
Immigration
It is from this fundamental view of the United States, all other nations, and each of their governments as representations of distinct peoples that National Conservatism’s view of immigration flows. Each country, rooted in its particular history has a particular religion, language, and culture, and from those traditions and each country’s “own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance”, the Nation arises.
Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.
National Conservatism’s adherents, which view the Nation as arising out of these inheritances, are thus highly skeptical of levels of immigration that may erode these traditions and thus the Nation. Only when a Nation can sufficiently assimilate immigrants into the National culture would immigration be warranted:
Today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We note that Western nations have benefited from both liberal and restrictive immigration policies at various times. We call for much more restrictive policies until these countries summon the wit to establish more balanced, productive, and assimilationist policies. Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.
Indeed, National Conservatism points to the relatively high levels of immigration in Europe and the United States as evidence of this erosion, necessitating a restriction of immigration.
This view of the United States seeks to challenge the idea of the US as being defined as a “Nation of Immigrants”. As argued by Claremont McKenna Professor Charles Kesler, this is largely in tension with the idea of the United States as a polyglot and a set of individual people deciding to collectively join together to form a Nation.
Some of these views, however, have largely become dominant in the Republican Party and were heavily promoted throughout the 2016-2020 Trump administration and even in the 2024 Republican Platform, illustrating the increasing influence of these views.
Ensure Our Legal Immigration System Puts American Workers First
Republicans will prioritize Merit-based immigration, ensuring those admitted to our Country contribute positively to our Society and Economy, and never become a drain on Public Resources. We will end Chain Migration, and put American Workers first!
Trade, Tariffs, and National Industry
In line with the belief in promoting an immigration system that prioritizes the idea of the Nation, National Conservatism promotes an emphasis on economic policy that strictly benefits the people of the Nation and National Industry. Put forward by the American Compass, a think tank started by former Mitt Romney adviser Oren Cass, with strong ties to the National Conservative movement:
We recognize that markets require rules and institutions to work well, that they are a means to the end of human flourishing and exist to serve us (not the other way around), and that larger televisions and fancier cars are not what people value most.
Indeed, in his 2024 National Conservatism speech, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, one of the key political leaders of the movement, even stated “The free market is valuable exactly to the degree to which it sustains the things that we love together… Labor is superior to capital and deserves much higher consideration” and in a recent oped penned:
Many Republican politicians have stupidly gone along with the suits. They have broken the backs of unions at every opportunity. They have forged trade deals that led directly to the hemorrhaging of 4 million good jobs to China. They have watched whole towns fall into decrepitude, and an entire generation of working men falter. In a word, they put money before people. Politicians that claimed to stand for morality instead stood for greed.
This is perhaps one of the largest cleavages that National Conservatism has with its predecessors and rivals within the Conservative movement at large. Rather than lower regulations, National Conservatives support tariffs, national industrial policy, and prioritizing of manufacturing and high-wage jobs. Rather than prioritizing GDP growth and lower prices for consumers, National Conservatives instead insist that markets and trade must serve the Nation and the communities within them foremost. Donald Trump himself has pledged to impose a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and at least a 10% levy on all other foreign imports regardless of economic consequences.
Today, globalized markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally.
While higher prices for consumer goods are necessarily a price for the implementation of these policies, National Conservatives largely believe that solely consumer price-related aims have been misguided. This has translated into additional support for unions throughout the United States from Republican political leaders and vice versa. Indeed, for the first time since 1996, the Teamsters did not endorse either Presidential candidate for office in 2024.
Tradition and the Family
However, the economic policy supported by National Conservatives is largely in service of protecting what they see as one of the most important institutions that give meaning to individual lives: the family. Decrying declining marriage rates, National Conservatives ostensibly support national industry, unions, and the jobs that they bring, largely for the role they have in promoting communities and the purpose and meaning they bring to individuals.
There was a time when Republicans knew that American strength depends squarely on American workers—and their way of life: family, neighborhood, church, union hall.
—Missouri Senator Josh Hawley
Governments, argue National Conservatives, should thus be utilized to promote and safeguard institutions like the family. Indeed, unlike libertarianism or other strains of the Conservative movement, National Conservatives argue that government should have an active role in public virtue and promote the traditional family (usually seen as a nuclear family with a mother, father, and children).
This has necessitated support for the expanded child tax credit and child care, positions often shared by Democrats and other liberals, but also for restrictive abortion policies. Government policy argues National Conservatives should be oriented toward family creation and limiting what they see as anti-family policies like abortion as much as possible.
This adherence to family, tradition, and community, has necessarily put National Conservatism squarely against what many have called “woke” culture.
Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.
This anti-woke attitude is perhaps best embodied by Ron Desantis, who utilized various apparatuses of Florida state government, to battle against Disney who disagreed with him on the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act (often called the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill by critics). Indeed, many even see National Conservatism as strictly an anti-woke movement, with many of his varied adherents joined together by their opposition to “woke” culture.
Is National Conservatism the Future of the Republican Party?
As America stands at a crossroads, the growing influence of National Conservatism signals a shift in the Republican Party, a movement that has sought to redefine longstanding Conservative priorities in favor of pure national interest, cultural preservation, and economic policies aimed at strengthening American workers and families. With Trump picking J.D. Vance, one the most prominent figures in the National Conservative movement, and the realignment of the Republican Party toward becoming a working-class party that would likely benefit from National Conservative economic policies, it can seem like National Conservatism is the inevitable future of the Republican Party.
Republicans, however, are still divided on Ukraine policy, disagree on tariffs, and often still oppose pro-union policies. Abortion was not even mentioned in the 2024 Republican platform. Figures like Vivek Ramaswamy, who also spoke at the National Conservatism conference, envision a leaner government and a more libertarian approach, further highlighting that National Conservatism is not yet the uncontested future of the Republican Party.
As the 2024 election season nears its end, the Republican Party’s identity is still in flux. While the Republican Party is united behind former President Donald Trump, it is decidedly not united behind a broad cohesive vision of what lies ahead for the Republican Party. From disagreements on foreign policy and immigration to debates over economic intervention and union support, the party is wrestling with its future path.
Ultimately, this evolving landscape within the Conservative movement reflects broader questions about America’s future direction: Will the country prioritize a return to nationalism, rooted in tradition, community, and self-reliance? Or will the allure of a smaller government, unencumbered by protectionist measures, prevail? As the campaign draws to a close, it’s clear that the choice America makes will shape not only the Republican Party’s future but also the Nation’s place in America’s conception of itself and of the world.