Prominent economist Steve Hanke publicly rebuked Vice President JD Vance, defending the free-market legacy of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman after Vance suggested conservative economic policy has moved past Friedman’s ideals.
Hanke’s Searing Rebuttal
Hanke, a Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, quickly fired back on the social media platform X. Hanke did not mince words in his defense of his late colleague.
“Instead of denouncing my friend, mentor and Nobelist Milton Friedman, VP JD Vance should stick to knitting,” Hanke wrote. He added, “If he bothered to listen to Friedman, he might learn a thing or two.”
To underscore his point, Hanke shared a 1979 video clip of Friedman warning against government overreach. Hanke highlighted Friedman’s verbatim quote: “The government is TOO BIG. It’s TOO INTRUSIVE. It RESTRICTS what we can do. It’s becoming our master instead of our servant. We’ve got to react against it and cut it down to size.”
A Shift to Hamiltonian Economics
The ideological clash stems from Vance’s recent appearance on The Michael Knowles Show on June 30, 2026. During the interview, Vance explicitly stated that “American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman.”
The Vice President predicted that this Hamiltonian tradition “will dominate American conservative economic thinking for the future.”
Vance argued that Friedman’s laissez-faire ideas were better suited for the 1980s because the United States maintained “a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity” that provided moral guardrails.
He contrasted this with today’s “globalized liberalism,” arguing that modern policies must actively build infrastructure to allow native industries and human beings to flourish, a departure from strict laissez-faire principles.
An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal characterized Vance’s stance as a deliberate endorsement of a “post-laissez-faire economic philosophy built around government-directed development.”
The Wall Street Journal commentary further argued that Vance’s claims confuse individual moral freedom with religious order, noting that markets require individual liberty and property rights rather than comprehensive Christian guardrails to function.
How Have Stock Markets Performed in 2026?
The S&P 500 index has advanced 12.54% year-to-date. Similarly, the Nasdaq Composite index was up 14.08%, and the Dow Jones gained 10.40% YTD.
On Friday, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ), which track the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, respectively, closed mixed. The SPY was down 0.39% to $770.19, while the QQQ advanced by 0.18% to $718.96. Meanwhile, the Dow tracker, State Street SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (NYSE:DIA), also ended 0.53% lower at $534.08.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Photo courtesy: Shutterstock
Login to comment