RON’S ECON AGENDA
KO ‘China sellout’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rolled out a wide-ranging plan for the US economy Monday, focusing most of his ire on China and big corporations — while indicating he was “game” for a constitutional amendment that would forever ban economic and social lockdowns meant to contain the spread of pandemics like COVID-19.
“I think at the end of the day, what happened . . . already violated the Constitution, the Fifth Amendment, because if you take somebody’s property, you’ve got to provide just compensation,” DeSantis said during a question-and-answer session in New Hampshire.
DeSantis, 44, was specifically asked if he would back an “amendment to prevent any more shutdowns from any other alleged Chinese viruses.”
“When I’m president, we’re going to usher in a reckoning about the people that perpetrated those policies so this never happens to our country,” the governor pledged.
During the event in Rochester, DeSantis railed against corporatism and the outsourcing of industrial jobs to China as he laid out his plan to rejuvenate the US economy.
“We cannot have policy that kowtows to the largest corporations on Wall Street at the expense of small businesses,” the 2024 Republican candidate declared at a manufacturing facility. “We also have to stop selling out this country’s future to China.”
Though the candidate was light on details about how he would confront Beijing during Monday’s event, his campaign website features vows to end China’s preferential trade status, ban imports deriving from stolen intellectual property, bolster protections against child and forced labor and restrict the sale of strategic assets like farmland to Chinese interests.
Boost for America
His agenda would provide “economic independence from the failed elites and policies that have harmed this nation’s middle class.”
DeSantis’ plan calls for pursuing 3% annual economic growth by cutting regulations and lowering taxes; energy independence; ending the practice of environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards by large investment firms; securing the US-Mexico border; opposing corporate and bank bailouts; and reining in government spending.