Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy plans to lay out his trade policy on Thursday, touting it as a declaration of economic independence from China, according to a draft of his remarks shared by the newspaper.
Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, plans to lay out a four-point plan to counter the Chinese Communist Party through a “pro-trade approach to intelligent decoupling from China,” which will address economic issues and national security concerns. He says it will be a matter of finding a balance.
Several key Republican opponents have indicated they will counter Chinese aggression through tariffs, including most notably former President Donald Trump, but many have expressed interest in continuing to engage with China. The United States has shown an aversion to disrupting trade relations.
The biotech entrepreneur said his trade-heavy approach was the only “serious” attempt among Republican candidates, and by shifting the emphasis from “peace through strength” to “prosperity through peace,” “It will modernize the doctrine,” he said.
The hotly anticipated candidate’s platform appears to build on the buzzy echoes of last month’s first Republican primary debate, when he declared “climate change is a hoax.”
According to Ramaswamy, the issue has “nothing to do with climate and is a sign that China will catch up with the United States economically,” as China’s greenhouse gas emissions remain much higher than other developed countries. It’s related to everything.”
“To declare independence from China abroad, we must first declare independence from climate change at home,” he plans to say.
That would require scaling back subsidies enacted by the Biden administration for electric vehicles and solar panels, something even members of the president’s own party like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) have said is a challenge. It has been criticized as a subsidy to China.
“Electric vehicle plans will exacerbate dependence on China for rare earth minerals and mineral refining capacity,” Ramaswamy would argue. “If American taxpayers subsidize EVs, American taxpayers are subsidizing the Chinese Communist Party.”
Ramaswamy’s plan also includes relying on countries such as India, Brazil and Chile to import rare earth minerals, many of which have reserves of lithium needed for semiconductors, an essential component of many electronic products. ing.
The second plan takes aim at last year’s passage of the CHIPS Act, which he calls a “huge gain” that pushed forward renewable energy efforts while ignoring measures to secure the semiconductor supply chain.
To prevent China’s economic dominance over semiconductor manufacturing, he said, “South Korea, Japan, and other countries that provide market access for their semiconductors to the U.S. market to compete with domestically supported U.S. semiconductor manufacturers. The plan is to propose “open trade relations with China.”
Ramaswamy also worked to ensure that the U.S. military would protect Taiwan, where much of the country’s semiconductor production takes place, in the event China invaded the island.
“We are the only presidential candidate who has said explicitly that we will protect Taiwan, at least until we achieve semiconductor independence, at which point we will return to our current position of U.S. strategic ambiguity,” Ramaswamy said in an interview with the Post. said in an interview.
Asked whether that defense would include the dispatch of U.S. troops, he said, “We will defend Taiwan so that China does not complete its invasion.”
His third plan would end the U.S. military’s dependence on China for strategic supplies and limit its involvement with foreign countries, including the war in Ukraine, which is “exacerbating military stockpile deficiencies.”
Ramaswamy’s opposition to U.S. security aid to Kiev puts him at odds with other Republican candidates, nearly all of whom have openly expressed disapproval of his views.
Finally, Ramaswamy pledged to break the “China-led pharmaceutical supply chain” to the U.S. and instead promote “domesticization of the country and stronger trade relationships with Israel, India and other countries.” do.
“The country that brought hell to the world with a man-made laboratory virus and is now supplying precursors to synthetic fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels and is using synthetic fentanyl to laced other pharmaceuticals with fentanyl is in conflict.” “It’s not inconceivable that we could end up in a situation where we could use poisoning of the legitimate pharmaceutical supply chain to bring further hell to America.” he would say, referring to the deaths caused by.
When asked about US funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is believed to have carried out dangerous gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses, Ramaswamy also said, “Chinese research… “I don’t think we should be funding the institution,” he told the Post. Potential origins of the pandemic.
