Vivek Ramaswamy spoke Wednesday to the Cato Institute about the future of the U.S. administrative state. Ramaswamy argued that some in the National Conservative movement, with its emphasis on capturing the executive branch and using federal agencies to advance conservative policy goals, are fundamentally mistaken both about the nature of those agencies and the substance of national excellence.
The beginning of the event was interrupted by a number of climate protestors, who jumped onto the stage with a banner accusing Ramaswamy of being a parasite. The protestors chanted “climate conman” for several minutes before being removed from the event.
Ramaswamy took advantage of the interruption, however, to add to the discussion. Referring to the debate over whether the Federal Trade Commission should block the acquisition of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel, he pointed out that the primary shareholder of U.S. Steel stock is Blackrock, a company which has repeatedly pressured companies to implement DEI initiatives, damaging climate policies, and other ESG-oriented measures. He argued that using the FTC to block the acquisition would be empowering bureaucrats that are opposed to conservative goals, including economic freedom, to use their power to the benefit of Blackrock and climate protestors like those who had just been ejected from the room.
“That doesn’t make any sense even on the substance advancing a conservative agenda,” he said. “Anytime that you are going to expand the scope of a three-letter agency, what you are actually doing is digging the grave you will fall into tomorrow.”
Throughout the event, Ramaswamy leveled criticisms at some National Conservatives both for their belief that the administrative state can and should be used to advance a conservative agenda and their advocacy for protectionist economic policy.
While noting that the “blind neoliberal consensus” pre-Trump had failed, particularly by making America more dependent on China, Ramaswamy asserted that a decoupling from China necessitates not protectionism but more trade with friendly countries like Japan and the Philippines. The future direction of American conservatism, he said, needs to be sovereignty, not the blind maximization of economic gains nor the protection of the interests of a narrow class of workers.
Ramaswamy argued that American sovereignty in the fullest sense requires a radical revision of the relationship between the various branches of government and the administrative state—America can be sovereign if and only if the government is run by the people we elect to run it.
I think [the administrative state] is the vestige of pre-revolutionary America under England and King George. The old view was that we, the people, could not be trusted to self-govern… We had to be overseen by the enlightened elite… I think if there’s one basic idea that unites all Americans, it’s that we believe in every person’s voice and vote counting equally as a citizen in a free marketplace of ideas… if we’re not able to govern ourselves that way, I think we’ve lost the essence of why we fought the American Revolution in the first place.
Ramaswamy’s proposed solution is a drastic reduction in both regulations and staff in federal agencies, which he argues can be unilaterally implemented by a strong executive. Citing several recent decisions by the Supreme Court, including Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, he suggested that the president could appoint constitutional lawyers to each agency who would review regulations and rulings for compliance with the Major Questions Doctrine. Regulations not in compliance could be struck by executive order, vastly reducing the total regulatory reach of the government. Simultaneously, federal bureaucracies could be trimmed without the need to deal with Civil Service protections by arbitrary mass layoffs—for example, firing all employees of executive agencies whose Social Security ID ends in an odd number.
When asked about the political feasibility of his proposal, Ramaswamy responded that it would depend on the courage of conservative leadership:
I think we live in one of the moments where we require leaders to show the people what they actually need… We’re seeing a little bit of that with Argentina. What Javier Milei has done—in a much smaller country, much less complicated circumstances—but it’s shown what’s possible in cutting the unimaginable, and actually, at least so far, showing results in a positive direction for the people as a result.
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