Two weeks ago, news broke that Japan’s Nippon Steel reached a deal to acquire U.S. Steel. Republican senators J. D. Vance (Ohio), Josh Hawley (Mo.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.) urged Treasury secretary Janet Yellen to block the acquisition on national-security grounds. (Secretary Yellen is chairwoman of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, which examines these kinds of deals for national-security risks and which will review this acquisition.)

Here’s the senators’ letter:

The national-security argument is silly, as I briefly argue in my post on X. But what I want to note is the number of GOP senators who signed this letter: three.

If you listen to all the talk about how economic nationalism is the “New Right” — and for all the talk about how those of us who maintain fidelity to the traditional conservative commitment to free markets, even broadly defined and as practiced by the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush are the “Old Right” — you would have expected more than three Republican senators to urge the executive branch to (mis)use its power to block this deal.

It looks like, when push comes to shove, the “New Right” is smaller than many seem to think.