Trump Announces Running Mate 

Yesterday marked the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where delegates officially confirmed Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for November’s Presidential Election.

Just hours before the start of the convention, Trump announced his running mate Senator JD Vance from Ohio on his social media platform, Truth Social. Vance’s rise to the upper echelons of the Republican party – not least its MAGA faction – has been meteoric having declared himself as a ‘never Trumper’ in 2016. Indeed, in that same year Vance said statements such as “I’m a ‘never Trump’ guy. I never liked him” as well as saying that “I find him reprehensible.”

Since 2016 however, Vance has become an ardent Trump supporter, and his appointment is likely to have meaningful implications on Trump’s election campaign. For example, according to one journalist writing in The Atlantic “Unlike Trump, he is a military veteran and a real product of the working class” and that “Vance brings youth and intellect to the Republican ticket. He could also strengthen the ticket in the upper Midwest, which Joe Biden must win to be re-elected”.

Having graduated from Ohio State University, Vance attended Yale Law School where he edited The Yale Law Journal.

In 2016 he published his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which spoke about growing up in rust-belt Ohio alongside poverty and drug addiction. It also covered his time in the US Marine Corps which involved Vance being deployed to Iraq as a combat correspondent. The memoir raised Vance to prominence having become a New York Times bestseller and later becoming a film directed by Ron Howard.

Since 2023, Vance has been the senator for Ohio where he has been described as holding a right-wing populist and national conservative line. The 39-year-old Senator also opposed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (the bipartisan deal assembled by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy which suspended the debt ceiling through to January 2025).

Elsewhere, one of the major implications for a potential Vance Vice Presidency would concern Ukraine, given that he has opposed, and been critical of, America’s military aid to Ukraine.

Trump will no doubt be breathing a considerable sigh of relief given that the criminal case brought against him for holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has been dismissed.

Yesterday afternoon, Judge Aileen Cannon approved Trump’s motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the appointment of special prosecutor Jack Smith was unconstitutional. (Jack Smith is also the special prosecutor in the case against alleged election-interference case being brought against Trump in Washington).

In August 2022, the FBI obtained a search warrant against Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on the grounds that he had breached the Espionage Act for storing 32 documents.

The federal case being brought against the former President consisted of 40 felony counts and the maximum sentence Trump could have faced if found guilty was 20 years imprisonment. Hence, the case being thrown out will be a welcome development to the Trump Campaign despite the fact that Cannon’s verdict will likely be appealed.

Today’s key data includes the release of an economic sentiment survey from the Eurozone at 10:00 in addition to inflation figures from Canada at 13:30 alongside US retail sales at the same time.