"I think it's been decided, as obviously as it possibly can be, that America First is the future direction of the Republican Party," former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy tells me.
Given the close association of "America First" with tariffs, industrial policy, and calls to close the borders, even to legal immigration, this might not seem to augur promising things for libertarians. But Ramaswamy sees two distinct live possibilities for what the phrase should actually mean. "From where I sit," he says, "the most important debate for the country to have is the intra–Republican Party and even intra–America First debate between the national protectionist and national libertarian wings."
During an evening keynote at the fourth National Conservative Conference in Washington, D.C., this week, Ramaswamy laid out these alternatives in some detail—and gently made the case that attendees of the nationalist event should rethink their indulgence in protectionism.
Both nationalist wings reject the "historical neoliberal consensus" that he says prioritized 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.
"The national protectionist answer to this recognizes the failures and risks of the neoliberal view," he said Tuesday night. "But it commingles those concerns with a totally separate concern about protecting American manufacturers from the effects of price erosion from foreign competition, including but not limited to China….The national libertarian view is different. It is focused entirely on eliminating U.S. dependence on China in those critical sectors for U.S. security"—namely, military equipment and pharmaceuticals.
As a cynical libertarian, I naturally raise an eyebrow at the invocation of "national security," which seems capacious enough in the hands of most nationalists to justify quite literally any government action they happen to wish to take. But Ramaswamy was forthright about what his vision would mean: "Here's the rub: If we were really serious about decoupling from China in those critical sectors, that actually means more, not less, trade with allies like Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam."
That's a correct and important point. "There's no way to actually decouple from China in those areas that are critical for U.S. security interests, at least for the foreseeable future, without near-shoring those supply chains to allies," Ramaswamy continued. "If your top objective is to protect American manufacturers from the effects foreign competition, then you're necessarily going to extend the time period it's going to take to actually decouple from China in those critical sectors. There's no free lunch."
On immigration, as on trade, he makes a distinction. National protectionists call for reducing immigration because they want to protect native-born Americans from low-wage competition, he says. National libertarians think 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 our sense of who we are, and sloppy immigration policies have only worsened that crisis."
Here again there are reasons to be skeptical. I would be curious to know what evidence Ramaswamy has that newcomers to our country—Americans by choice, as opposed to the overwhelmingly native-born progressives who populate the faculties of elite colleges and the editorial boards of elite newspapers—have played a significant role in "fraying" our national unity. Moreover, those who invoke identity in the national conservative context frequently turn out to favor policies aimed at preserving the ethno-religious makeup of America from "dilution" or "contamination" by those from other backgrounds.
When I press Ramaswamy on that second point during a follow-up call, he assures me that he doesn't buy the "genetic-lineage, blood-and-soil argument," which "tries to reinvent the U.S. national identity through the lens of the way most historical nations have been built."
"You just smoked out the subtext of much of the difference in the conversation about what does it mean to be an American," he says. "To me, that is 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're more of an American because you're a member of a specific religion or ethnic background? No. He would not have said that. I wouldn't say that today either."
That's encouraging—and represents a genuine departure from a number of his allies. Just a day after Ramaswamy's speech, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) took the stage and mocked the idea that America is a "creedal nation."
Still, the practical elements of Ramaswamy's approach to immigration leave open some big questions. Since his goals are "to protect U.S. national security, to preserve U.S. national identity, and to promote U.S. economic growth—in that order," he supports a crackdown at the southern border and an end to both dual and "birthright" citizenship. He shorthands his view using the following three maxims: No migration without consent; consent should only be granted to migrants who benefit America and who share our national values; and migrants who enter unlawfully, without consent, must be removed.
I suspect most Americans would find that to be an eminently commonsense platform—until confronted with the problem of how to operationalize it. Just try to imagine the kind of expansive, intrusive police state that would be required to find and deport the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants who are currently living and working in communities across the United States, some of whom were brought here as small children and have never known life anywhere else.
When I ask how he would even begin to enforce the tenet that illegals "must be removed," Ramaswamy backpedals. His speech "was a first principles vision, which is a different topic than the implementation of it," he says. "All of it should be done in a manner that advances the interests of the United States of America…and to me the most important of those interests are the liberty interests enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution."
"The Constitution comes first, always," he adds, pointing to the fact that he opposed reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as proof that civil liberties are core values for him. It sounds like he views the removal of illegals as a theoretical ideal rather than a programmatic objective. But in the hands of less-scrupulous natcons, that ideal could still open the door to some horrific violations of individual rights. His claim during Tuesday's address that 90 percent of his immigration policies would probably overlap with a national protectionist's did not put my mind at ease either.
There is at least one subject, though, where Ramaswamy's "national libertarianism" does give bona fide supporters of free minds and free markets some cause to celebrate: "The national protectionist view believes at its core in reshaping and redirecting the regulatory state to achieve objectives that advance the interests of American workers and American manufacturers," he said during his speech. "By contrast, the national libertarian view is different. We don't believe in reshaping the regulatory state to accomplish any objectives. We believe in dismantling the regulatory state. Not because we don't care about American workers or manufacturers but because we believe this is the way to best advance the interests of American workers and manufacturers."
When the crowd at the Capital Hilton applauded, he called them out with a list of natcon policy proposals that would grow 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 be handing woke government agencies like the CFPB more power?" he asked. "The national libertarian answer to that question is simple: Hell no!"
"I don't care to replace a left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state," Ramaswamy declared at NatCon. Or as he puts it during our follow-up conversation: "I think that's a mistake the left has long made, using the administrative state as a way to coddle certain groups of Americans. And I don't think we're going to beat the left by becoming the left."
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