Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy laid out his trade platform in a speech Thursday in Ohio, touting it as a declaration of economic independence from China that would restore the American heartland.
Ramaswamy, 38, laid out a four-point plan to counter the Chinese Communist Party through a “pro-trade approach to disengage from China” that he said would balance economic issues with national security concerns.
Some key Republican opponents have signaled an openness to fighting Chinese aggression through tariffs — including, most prominently, former President Donald Trump — but many have signaled reluctance to disrupt ongoing trade ties with Beijing.
“Now who is our main enemy today? It’s not the USSR — that fell in 1990,” he told a crowd gathered at a plastics manufacturing plant in New Albany, Ohio. “As has been forgotten, our main enemy today is Communist China.”
The biotech entrepreneur said his trade-focused approach was the only “serious” attempt among GOP candidates and would “modernize the Reagan Doctrine” by shifting its emphasis from “peace through strength” to “prosperity through peace.”
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will present his trade policy to declare economic independence from China in a speech Thursday.ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA
Ramaswamy plans to present a four-point plan in a speech at a plastics manufacturing plant in his home state of Ohio to counter the Chinese Communist Party through a “pro-trade approach.” POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Ramaswamy began by criticizing the decision to admit China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, saying the US had “lost the plot” by thinking it could “export Big Macs and Happy Meals and somehow it would export our values to the CCP.”
“What they realize is that they can use their access to their markets, their money to make us more like them,” he said, noting that Beijing has lashed out at US officials over alleged human rights abuses and terrorized American businesses into turning a blind eye to rights abuses. CCP’s own people.
“The Chinese Communist Party built a great wall of China that prevents you from entering the Chinese market if you criticize the CCP, but they will roll out the red carpet if you criticize the United States,” Ramaswamy said.
He went on to call out Nike for relying on the “slave labor” of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, saying it was “one of the worst human rights atrocities committed by a major country since the German Third Reich.”
The long-shot candidate’s platform also built on noise from the first Republican primary debate last month, when he declared, “The climate change agenda is a hoax.”
According to Ramaswamy, the issue has “nothing to do with climate and everything to do with letting China catch up with the US” economically, as Beijing’s greenhouse gas emissions remain far higher than other developed countries.
“To declare independence from China, we must declare independence from the climate change agenda here at home,” he said.
This would involve withdrawing subsidies enacted by the Biden administration for electric vehicles and solar panels, he added, which even members of the president’s own party such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) have criticized as a giveaway to China.
Some key Republican opponents have signaled openness to fighting Chinese aggression through tariffs — including, most notably, former President Donald Trump.REUTERS
“I have no problem with the existence and purchase of electric vehicles. But I have a problem with subsidized industries that falsely tilt the scale towards China,” said Ramaswamy.
“We depend on China for rare earth minerals, and mineral oil refining capacity to provide those electric vehicles in the United States. So when you, as a taxpayer, subsidize EVs, we are actually subsidizing the Chinese Communist Party that we rely on for the production of those EVs. Same story for solar panels in this country.”
Ramaswamy’s plan also involves turning to countries such as India, Brazil and Chile for imports of rare earth minerals, many of which contain lithium reserves needed for semiconductors, a key component of many electronic products.
The second board took aim at last year’s passage of the CHIPS Act, which he called a “Green New Deal disguised in CHIPS clothing” for having pushed renewable energy initiatives while ignoring measures to secure the semiconductor supply chain.
Ramaswamy will support the rollback of subsidies passed under the Biden administration for electric vehicles and solar panels, which have been criticized as giveaways to China.AP
To prevent China’s economic dominance of semiconductor manufacturing, he suggested “reopening and expanding trade relations with our friends in Japan and South Korea,” which would also “compete” with US semiconductor manufacturers.
Ramaswamy in an interview with The Post before the event also committed in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to the US military to defend the island, where the majority of semiconductor production takes place.
“I am the only presidential candidate who is clear that we will defend Taiwan, at least until we achieve semiconductor independence, where we resume the US posture during a time of strategic ambiguity,” Ramaswamy said.
Asked if the defense would involve the deployment of US troops, he said: “We will defend Taiwan to ensure that China does not succeed in completing its invasion.”
Ramaswamy’s second board targeted passage of the CHIPS Act last year, which he called a “boondoggle” because it had pushed renewable energy initiatives.AP
His third plank would end the US military’s reliance on China for strategic materials and limit foreign entanglements, including the war in Ukraine, which he said in a prepared speech had “exacerbated the shortfall in our military stockpile.”
In his speech, Ramaswamy also took issue with the size of the US defense budget, saying the Pentagon spent “over $3 trillion on wars spanning Afghanistan to Iraq over the past 20 years that have not advanced US interests.”
Ramaswamy’s opposition to US security aid for Kyiv has put him at odds with other Republican candidates, nearly all of whom have expressed outright disagreement with his views.
Finally, Ramaswamy pledged to “break our pharmaceutical dependence on China” and instead strengthen trade ties with Israel, India and other countries.
Asked whether the defense would involve the deployment of US troops, Ramaswamy said: “We will defend Taiwan to ensure that China does not succeed in completing its invasion.”
“The same country that unleashed hell on the world with COVID-19, with a man-made virus, the same country that waged a one-sided and illegal Opium War that laced fentanyl into other drugs that cross the border illegally, is the same country that we depend on 95% of our imports for the over the counter medicines we take every day,” he said. “This is unacceptable.”
“The main synthetic precursor to making fentanyl comes from — you can’t make this stuff — comes from Wuhan,” he added.
“I don’t think we should be funding Chinese research institutions,” Ramaswamy told The Post when asked about US funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted risky profit experiments with bat coronaviruses and is considered the potential origin of the outbreak.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
