“I think it’s become clear that America first is the future direction of the Republican Party,” former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told me.
Given that “America First” is closely associated with tariffs, industrial policy, and calls for border closures and even legalization For liberals, this doesn’t seem to bode well. But Ramaswamy thinks there are two distinct possibilities for the actual meaning of this statement. “From where I stand,” he said, “the most important debate in this country is the first debate within the Republican Party, and indeed within the United States, between national protectionists and national liberals.”
In the evening keynote speech fourth At the national conservative conference in Washington, D.C., this week, Ramaswamy elaborated on these alternatives and gently suggested that attendees of the nationalist event should reconsider their indulgence of protectionism.
Both nationalist factions reject what he calls the “historic neoliberal consensus” that prioritizes economic growth above all else, including national security. But they do so “for different reasons and with very different implications for trade and immigration policy”.
“State protectionism’s answer to this recognizes the failures and risks of the neoliberal perspective,” he said on Tuesday night. “But it combines these concerns with the entirely separate concern of protecting U.S. manufacturers from the price erosion of foreign competition, including but not limited to China… The national liberal view is different. It is entirely focused on eliminating the U.S. Dependence on China is in key areas of U.S. security” — namely, military equipment and pharmaceuticals.
As a cynical liberal, I am naturally surprised by the invocation of “national security,” a term that in the hands of most nationalists seems broad enough to justify it literally. any Government action they happen to want. But Ramaswamy is blunt about what his vision means: “The question is: if we are really serious about decoupling from China in these key areas, what it actually means is increased trade with allies like Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, etc. Not a reduction.
that’s a correct and an important point. Ramaswamy continued: “At least for the foreseeable future, there is no way to truly decouple from China in those areas that are critical to U.S. security interests without nearshoring those supply chains to allies.” “If you “If your primary goal is to protect U.S. manufacturers from foreign competition, you’re bound to prolong the time it takes to decouple from China in these critical areas.”
On immigration, as on trade, he drew a distinction. National protectionists call for less immigration because they want to protect native-born Americans from low-wage competition, he said. National liberals argue that we need to be more selective about who we allow into the country because “we are in the midst of a national identity crisis. We have lost a sense of who we are, and sloppy immigration policies have only exacerbated this.” crisis.
Here again there is reason to be skeptical. I’d be interested to know what evidence Ramaswamy has that newcomers to our country—Americans by choice, rather than the overwhelming majority of homegrown progressives on elite university faculty and elite newspaper editorial boards—are here played an important role. Furthermore, those who invoke status among national conservatives context Often supports policies designed to protect America’s ethno-religious makeup from being “diluted” or “contaminated” by people from other backgrounds.
When I pressed Ramaswamy on this second point in a follow-up phone call, he assured me that he did not believe in “the genetic lineage, lineage, and soil argument” that “seeks to reshape America’s national identity through a lens “The way most historical countries were founded. ”
“You just pick up the subtext of a lot of differences in the conversation about what it means to be American,” he said. “For me, it goes hand in hand with the set of civic ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I often think the best answer to the question of what it means to be an American is to go back and ask Thomas Jay Ferson What would he say about you being more of an American because you are a member of a particular religious or ethnic background?
That’s encouraging — and represents a real departure from some of his allies. The day after Ramaswamy’s speech, Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance took to the stage to ridicule the idea that the United States is a “creed nation.”
Still, there are some significant questions about the actual content of Ramaswamy’s immigration policy. Because his goals are to “protect U.S. national security, preserve U.S. national identity, and promote U.S. economic growth, in order,” he supports crackdowns on the southern border and an end to dual citizenship and “birthright” citizenship. He summed up his views with the following three maxims: No immigration without consent; Consent should be granted only to immigrants who benefit the United States and share our national values; and immigrants who enter illegally without consent must be deported.
I suspect most Americans will find this a very common-sense platform—until faced with the question of how to operate it. Imagine what kind of vast, intrusive police state it would take to find and deport the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants now living and working in communities across the United States, some of whom were brought here as children. Experience life in other places.
When I asked him how he would begin to enforce the principle that illegal immigrants “must be eliminated,” Ramaswamy reneged. His speech “was a vision of first principles, which is a different subject than implementing it,” he said. “All of this should be done in a manner that advances the interests of the United States of America… To me, the most important of those interests are the interests of liberty enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”
“The Constitution always comes first,” he added, pointing to the fact that he opposed reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as evidence that civil liberties are a core value of his. It sounds like he sees clearing out illegal immigrants as a theoretical ideal rather than a programmatic goal. But in the hands of a less cautious citizenry, this ideal can still open the door to some horrific violations of individual rights. I’m also troubled by his claim in Tuesday’s speech that 90 percent of his immigration policies might overlap with those of national protectionists.
Ramaswamy’s “national liberalism” does, however, give true proponents of free thought and free markets some cause for celebration on at least one theme: “At its core, the state protectionist perspective is about reshaping and adapting the regulatory state. To achieve goals that advance the interests of American workers and American manufacturers,” he said in his speech. “In contrast, the perspective of state libertarians is different. We don’t believe in reinventing the regulatory state to achieve anything. We believe in abolishing the regulatory state. Not because we don’t care about American workers or manufacturers, but because we believe in This is the best way to advance the interests of American workers and manufacturers.
As the crowd at the Capitol Hilton applauded, he presented them with a list of natcon policy proposals that would bolster the powers of agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the U.S. Department of Education. “As conservatives across the country, do we really want to give more power to a woke government agency like the CFPB?” he asked. “National liberals’ answer to this question is simple: Absolutely not!”
“I don’t want to replace the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state,” Ramaswamy declared at NatCon. Or as he put it in our follow-up conversation: “I think that’s a mistake the left has made for a long time. , using the administrative state as a way to coddle certain groups of Americans, and I don’t think we’re going to beat being left by being left.
