Vivek Ramaswamy says eliminating fed regulations will bring back manufacturing

For the past few weeks Newton has been rife with presidential candidates eager to give their final words before the Iowa caucuses. The town is so thick with Oval Office hopefuls that if Vivek Ramaswamy had arrived to Okoboji Grill about a few hours earlier, he would been face-to-face with opponent Asa Hutchinson.

Jasper County Republican Party Chair Thad Nearmyer confirmed the former governor of Arkansas had lunch at the Newton restaurant, located just off exit 164 of Interstate 80. Hutchinson’s appearance was unscheduled and was gone long before Ramaswamy staffers prepared their commit-to-caucus event.

Unlike his past visits to Newton — this was his third time venturing through — Ramaswamy was joined by his wife, Apoorva, who provided opening remarks and some background about her husband before he arrived. He’s a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, she said, but he currently lives in Columbus, Ohio.

It was these details about his life and upbringing that helped Newton resident and local historian Larry Hurto form his question about restarting manufacturing in areas that have since lost their industrial strengths; the framing of the question also paralleled struggles Newton continues to face 17 years after Maytag left.

“You’re well-attuned to the fact industry and manufacturing is not part of the landscape any longer,” Hurto said. “As a CEO, what do you feel you as a chief executive could do to bring back, particularly, manufacturing to this country, to places like Cincinnati, Columbus, but also Des Moines and maybe Newton?”

Ramaswamy began by getting to what he claimed is the root cause of why businesses are leaving the United States. There are regulations and limitations, he said, that are applied in the United States that do not apply in places like China. Much of that takes the form of the “climate agenda,” Ramaswamy said.

“Which is shackling the U.S. They make you measure carbon emissions if you have a factory here. Same factory in China you don’t have those same carbon emission measurements. Well, if you’re a company doing the math you can say, ‘Hey, I can still make the goods there,’” Ramaswamy said.

So then what can a president do in this situation? Ramaswamy said the heart of his agenda “is shutting down that regulatory state,” the fourth branch of government. The people Americans elect to run the government, he claimed, are not running the government; it’s the people running the “three-letter offices.”

The managerial bureaucracy is pulling the strings of power, he said, and are putting too many regulatory restrictions on businesses, such as anti-drilling restrictions, anti-fracking restrictions and labor restrictions. These policies do not come from Congress, they come from “three-letter agencies,” Ramaswamy said.

Which is also what Ramaswamy calls the swamp or the deep state. But the good news is, he said, is that he can fix these regulations as the next president of the United States of America without asking Congress for permission or for forgiveness because he will run the executive branch of government.

“So when I’m in office you ask me as a CEO how I’m going to this? Well I’ve hired thousands of people as a CEO. I know that if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, that means they don’t work for you,” he said. “In some literal sense it means you work for them.”

Ramaswamy told audiences he would not be a puppet, a sentiment he instead assigned to President Joe Biden.

“Day One: We implement 75 percent mass firings across the federal bureaucracy. That’s how you drain the swam,” he said. “Eight-year term limits for the bureaucrats who report into me. If I can’t work for you as your next president for more than eight years, neither should ... those (who) report in to me.”

Ramaswamy also said any regulation not directly based on a law passed by Congress will be rescinded his first day in office.

“It’s unconstitutional,” he said.

Ramaswamy praised the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision for West Virginia v. EPA, which held the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority to regulate emissions from existing power plants based on generation shifting mechanisms and thereby invalidating the Clean Power Plan.

But the EPA can continue to regulate emissions at existing plants. Ramaswamy interpreted the ruling as “unconstitutional,” and to him it also meant “the overwhelming majority of all federal regulations are unconstitutional.” He said once those regulations are gone, manufacturing comes back in a heartbeat.

“That actually brings back economic growth in this country in a heartbeat,” Ramaswamy said. “Now, we’re not shackling ourselves with the same handcuffs we’re using to let China lap us. That’s a big part of what’s driven businesses out of Ohio and Iowa but much of the rest of this country as well.”