“I think it’s been decided as clearly as possible that America First is the future direction of the Republican Party,” former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswami told me.
“America First” is closely tied to tariffs, industrial policy and calls to close borders, and is a legitimate On immigration, this might not seem like a promising sign for libertarians, but Ramaswami sees two distinct possibilities for what the phrase should actually mean. “From where I stand, the most important debate in this country is the debate between national protectionists and national libertarians within the Republican Party and even within America First,” he says.
In the evening keynote speech the 4th At the National Conservative Conference in Washington DC this week, Ramaswami detailed these alternatives, gently arguing that attendees at the nationalistic event should reconsider their commitment to protectionism.
Both nationalist camps reject what he calls the “historic neoliberal consensus” that prioritized economic growth above all else, including national security, but they do so “for different reasons and with very different implications on trade and immigration policy.”
“The statist response to this recognizes the failures and risks of the neoliberal view,” he said Tuesday night, “but it blends those concerns with an entirely different concern: protecting U.S. manufacturers from the price-decreasing effects of foreign competition, not just from China. … The statist liberal view is different. It is entirely focused on eliminating U.S. dependence on China in areas that are crucial to U.S. national security: military equipment and pharmaceuticals.”
As a cynical libertarian, I naturally frown at the “national security” argument, which in the hands of most nationalists seems powerful enough to be literally justified. Any That’s the government action they happen to want.But Ramaswamy was forthright about what his vision means: “Here’s the thing: If we’re really serious about decoupling with China in these critical areas, it means more trade with allies like Japan, South Korea, India and Vietnam, not less.”
it is correct And it’s an important point: “There is no way, at least in the near term, to actually decouple from China in areas critical to U.S. national security interests without nearshoring supply chains to our allies,” Ramaswami continued. “If the overarching objective is to protect American manufacturers from the effects of foreign competition, then the time it takes to actually decouple from China in these critical areas will necessarily be long. Nothing is free.”
On immigration, as well as trade, he makes a distinction: national protectionists want to cut immigration because they want to protect native-born Americans from low-wage competition, he says. National liberals think we need to be more careful about who we allow into the country. “We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis. We’ve lost our sense of who we are, and poor immigration policy has only made that crisis worse.”
Here, too, there is reason to be skeptical. I would like to know what evidence Ramaswami presents that newcomers to our country (not the overwhelmingly American-born progressives who occupy the faculties of our elite universities and the editorial boards of our elite newspapers, but people who came to the United States by choice) played a significant role in “unravelling” our unity. Moreover, those who claim a national conservative identity context They often tend to support policies aimed at protecting America’s ethno-religious makeup from “dilution” or “contamination” by people of other backgrounds.
When I pressed Ramaswami on the second point in a subsequent phone call, he asserted that he did not believe in “the genetic lineage, blood and soil argument” that “seeks to reconstruct U.S. national identity through the lens of how most historical nations were built.”
“You’ve just illuminated the meaning behind many of the differences in the conversation about what it means to be an American,” he says. “For me, it’s tied to a set of civic ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I often think a good answer to the question of what it means to be an American is to go back and ask what Thomas Jefferson would have said. Would he have said that you are more American because you have a particular religion or ethnic background? No. He wouldn’t say that, and I wouldn’t say that today.”
It was an encouraging development, and marked a real break from many of his allies. Just a day after Ramaswami’s speech, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) took to the stage to ridicule the idea that America is a “nation of beliefs.”
Still, some big questions remain about the practical aspects of Ramaswami’s immigration policy. Because his goals are “protecting U.S. national security, preserving American national identity, and promoting American economic growth, in that order,” he supports policing the southern border and ending dual and “birthright” citizenship. He succinctly expresses his views in three principles: “No removal without consent. Consent should only be given to immigrants who benefit the United States and share the values ​​of American people. Immigrants who enter illegally without consent must be deported.”
To most Americans, this seems like a perfectly common-sense policy, but not when faced with the question of how to implement it. Imagine the massive, intrusive police state that would be necessary to track down and deport the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants currently living and working in communities across the United States, some of whom were brought to the United States as young children and have never known life anywhere else.
When I asked how he would put into practice his doctrine that illegal immigrants “must be removed,” Ramaswami backpedaled. “His speech is a vision of first principles; implementing it is another story,” he said. “Everything should be done in a way that advances the interests of the United States of America… and to me, the most important of those interests is the interest of liberty enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”
“The Constitution always comes first,” he added, pointing to his opposition to reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as evidence that civil liberties are a core value to him. He seems to see deporting illegal immigrants as a theoretical ideal rather than a programmatic goal, but in the hands of an unscrupulous nationalist, that ideal could lead to horrific violations of individual rights. His assertion in Tuesday’s speech that 90 percent of his immigration policies would overlap with those of nationalist protectionists also did not reassure me.
But there is at least one theme in Ramaswami’s “national libertarianism” that gives true supporters of free spirits and free markets reason to rejoice: “At its core, the idea of ​​national protectionism is that we achieve our goals by reshaping and redirecting the regulatory state to advance the interests of American workers and American manufacturers,” he said in his speech. “By contrast, national libertarians think differently. We don’t see the need to reshape the regulatory state to achieve our goals. We believe in dismantling the regulatory state — not because we don’t care about American workers and manufacturers, but because we believe this is the way to best advance the interests of American workers and manufacturers.”
As the audience at the Capital Hilton erupted in applause, he rebuked them with a list of National Conservative policy proposals that would increase the power of agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the U.S. Department of Education. “Do we as national conservatives really want to give more power to conscious government agencies like the CFPB?” he asked. “The National Libertarian answer to that question is simple: Absolutely not!”
“I don’t care about replacing the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state,” Ramaswami declared at NationalCon. Or, as he said in a conversation afterward, “Using the administrative state as a means to pamper certain groups of Americans is a mistake the left has made for a long time, and I don’t think you can beat the left by being left.”
