Vivek Ramaswamy, the millionaire entrepreneur and author of Woke, Inc., announced Tuesday that he is running for president.
“To put America first, we need to rediscover what America is. That’s why I am running for president,” he told National Review. “I am launching not only a political campaign but a cultural movement to create a new American Dream — one that is not only about money but about the unapologetic pursuit of excellence itself.”
He said he has “lived the full arc of the American dream” as a first-generation Indian American. Ramaswamy, who attended Harvard for undergrad before attending Yale Law, is the son of a General Electric engineer and a geriatric psychiatrist.
We’ve celebrated our “diversity” so much that we forgot all the ways we’re really the same as Americans, bound by ideals that united a divided, headstrong group of people 250 years ago. I believe deep in my bones those ideals still exist. I’m running for President to revive them. pic.twitter.com/bz5Qtt4tmm
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) February 22, 2023
Ramaswamy founded biotech company Roivant Sciences in 2014 and served as its CEO until 2021. That year, he published Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, which says that despite “rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world,” stakeholder capitalism “robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity.”
In May 2022, Ramaswamy announced the launch of his new financial firm, Strive, which would focus on “excellence capitalism” rather than encouraging American corporations to get involved in social or environmental issues.
Ramaswamy told National Review this week that he founded Strive to “deliver a market solution to the politicization of capital markets and corporate America, in the form of the [environmental, social, and corporate governance] and related movements.”
“But market solutions alone will not spawn the national revival that we need,” he said, adding that he stepped down from his post as executive chairman of Strive to focus on his presidential campaign.
He is calling for a return to “merit in every sphere of our lives.”
“That means restoring merit for who gets to come to America — securing the border unapologetically and eliminating lottery-based immigration in favor of meritocratic admission,” he said. “We must embrace merit in who gets to succeed in America. As president I would eliminate affirmative action across the American economy.”
Ramaswamy said he’s been drawn to the idea of running to address a “national identity crisis” that has left Americans hungry for purpose, meaning, and identity.
“We are at a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — faith, patriotism, hard work, even family — have disappeared,” he said, adding that in its absence, “wokeism, climate-ism as an ideology, radical gender ideology, Covidism” have become secular religions that fill that “black hole of identity.”
Conservatives have gotten too good at pointing out the problem and “trying to stamp out the poison without actually addressing the real problem,” said Ramaswamy, who has been dubbed the “CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.” The solution, he says, is to “fill that identity void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep, that it dilutes the secular agendas to irrelevance.”
Only once the U.S. finds a united identity can the country begin to take on its external threats, Ramaswamy said. He has called for a “total decoupling” from China, which he noted is at the top of the list of threats.
“This will not be easy and will require a comprehensive set of policies to accomplish the goal: Declare independence from China,” he said. “If we can defeat China economically now, we can avoid having to do so militarily later.”
Taking on China will involve reclaiming global energy leadership, achieving semiconductor self-sufficiency while “vigorously protecting Taiwan,” and banning children under 16 from using TikTok, he said.
“We must use financial levers to hold China accountable for spawning the Covid-19 pandemic. We must even be willing to bar U.S. companies from expanding into China until its government abandons theft and other mercantilist tactics. We can rise to this occasion if we rediscover who we really are,” he concluded.
Ramaswamy was critical of President Biden’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon, which the U.S. military shot down off the Carolina coast earlier this month, days after it first violated U.S. air space.
“China sent the spy balloon to send a message about who’s in charge. Biden received that message loud and clear. He should’ve shot it down instantly,” he said.
Ramaswamy has also been outspoken about the need to address Big Tech censorship and has called to convert Section 230 — the law that protects social-media companies from being legally liable for the content their users post — into an opt-in statute.
“If companies enjoy federal protections, they should be bound by the same constraints as the federal government — including the First Amendment itself,” he said. “Can’t have it both ways.”
Taking inspiration from Elon Musk’s “Twitter files,” Ramaswamy said he would release the “state action files,” if he were elected, to publicly expose every known instance in which bureaucrats have wrongfully pressured companies to take constitutionally prohibited actions.
Ramaswamy would be a long-shot candidate in what is likely to be a crowded Republican primary — though only Nikki Haley and former president Donald Trump have formally announced 2024 bids so far. He would also likely be the youngest candidate to enter the field.