Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unveiled his “Declaration of Economic Independence” as part of his 2024 presidential campaign. DeSantis aims to bolster the U.S. economy by targeting China and promoting domestic manufacturing. Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman notes similarities between DeSantis’ economic agenda and President Joe Biden’s policies, as both candidates focus on addressing China. As Newman notes, “there is a lot of interesting overlap between the two candidates who otherwise are quite different.”
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis laying out new economic policy targeting China taxes and regulations. Here with the details, we want to bring in Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman. And, Rick, whether or not this is going to resonate here with voters, that’s to be determined. But what did we learn just about DeSantis’s priorities here?
RICK NEWMAN: Well, he ticked off 10 points in his so-called declaration of economic independence. He said things such as. We have to decouple from China. We have to get tougher on China.
We have to reshore manufacturing. we have to bring more manufacturing back to the United States. We even have to use the government to guide some of this reshoring of manufacturing to the United States.
And I sat there thinking to myself, wait, I need to do a double take because I feel like I’m listening to President Biden. There seems to be remarkable overlap at least with regard to the China parts of DeSantis’s economic policy with what President Biden wants to do. Biden is basically doing all of those things.
He has encouraged US allies to join the United States in trying to build kind of a trade coalition against China. He has signed these big bills that provide giant subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, green energy manufacturing in the United States. That’s right out of the Chinese playbook, where the government subsidizes favored sectors.Story continues
And last year, Biden put in these new sanctions against advanced semiconductor sales to China. So the question to me is, what would DeSantis do that Biden isn’t already doing? And he didn’t really say, except the one sort of broad point is that he would end China’s normal trade status with the United States. But I think that in a de facto way, we have already ended China’s normal trade status with the United States through the Trump tariffs, through different Biden measures, and things like that.
So there are some other ways that DeSantis differs from Biden. One example is he doesn’t love subsidies for green manufacturing. He thinks that’s forcing people to buy electric vehicles. He would favor more help for domestic fossil fuel production. But a lot of interesting overlap between these two candidates who otherwise are quite different.
DIANE KING HALL: OK, so yes, that’s what I was going to say because it does– the similarities are striking to me as well, Rick. So I got to ask you, in terms of what came out today, does this change anything about DeSantis’s status when you compare him to Trump as a contender?
RICK NEWMAN: It depends what comes next. And DeSantis is not really getting traction with his efforts so far to distinguish himself from Trump and try to gain an advantage that way. It’s because he’s not making that much of a distinction with Trump, meaning he endorses many Trumpy policies, and he almost continually refuses to criticize Trump about anything, including, you know, criminal indictments in two legal cases and probably two more legal cases coming.
So how does DeSantis distinguish himself? He’s been talking about the woke mind virus. You know, he’s on this anti-woke crusade. He’s got this war against the Disney corporation over basically social and cultural issues.
However, I noticed in his speech today, he did not use the word woke one time, not a single time. That has been sort of a go-to word for him, the way he’s ranted about the woke mind virus. And he also did not mention the Disney corporation a single time. And before now, he has actually bragged about taking on Disney.
So DeSantis might be learning some lessons here, given that he’s really getting nowhere in the polls and actually slipping against Trump, that what he’s been doing so far hasn’t been working. So maybe try something new.
SEANA SMITH: We’ll see whether or not this helps him regain some of that momentum. All right, Rick Newman, thanks so much.
RICK NEWMAN: Bye, guys.
