PALAKKAD: Indian-American tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has launched his 2024 presidential bid with a promise to "put merit back" and end dependence on China, becoming the second community member to enter the Republican Party's presidential primary after Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the UN, launched her presidential bid last week.
"I am proud to say tonight that I am running for president to revive those ideals in this country," Vivek Ramaswamy, added, “I think we need to put ‘merit’ back into ‘America’ in every spirit of our lives,” said Vivek Ramaswamy.
The 37-year-old is the author of "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam" and has been dubbed "the CEO of Anti-Woke, Inc." in a magazine profile last year.
Who is Vivek Ramaswamy?
Ramaswamy was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio in US. His parents immigrated from Vadakkencherry, Palakkad, Kerala. Ramaswamy's father V.G. Ramaswamy did his pre-degree from the Government Victoria College, Palakkad, and graduated from the Regional Engineering College, Calicut (now NIT) with a gold medal and then went on to work at the General Electric Plant in Evendale, Ohio. Cincinnati's St. Xavier High School is where Ramaswamy earned his diploma in 2003. His mother, Dr Geetha Ramaswamy was a psychiatrist.
A second-generation Indian-American, Ramaswamy founded Roivant Sciences in 2014 and led the largest biotech IPOs of 2015 and 2016, eventually culminating in successful clinical trials in multiple disease areas that led to FDA-approved products.
He has founded other successful healthcare and technology companies, and in 2022, he launched Strive Asset Management, a new firm focused on restoring the voices of everyday citizens in the American economy by leading companies to focus on excellence over politics.
"I'm all for putting America first, but in order to put America first, we have to first rediscover what America is. And to me, those are these basic rules of the road that set this nation into motion from meritocracy to free speech, to self-governance over aristocracy."
"The people who we elect actually make them run the government rather than this cancerous federal bureaucracy. That's gonna be the heart of my message," Ramaswamy told Fox News.
He said the US faces external threats like the rise of China.
"It has got to be our top foreign policy threat that we've gotta respond to, not pointless wars somewhere else. That's gonna require some sacrifice. It's gonna require a declaration of independence from China and complete decoupling. And that's not gonna be easy. It's gonna require some inconvenience," he said.
Foreign policy is all about prioritisation, Ramaswamy said.
"We gotta wake up to the fact that China is violating our sovereignty and the reason, if that had been a Russian spy balloon, we'd have shot it down instantly and ratcheted up sanctions. Why didn't we do that for China?" he asked.
"The answer's simple. We depend on them for our modern way of life. This economic co-dependent relationship has to end," he said.
In a statement Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison said as Ramaswamy used Tucker Carlson's show to announce his campaign for president, one thing is clear: The race for the Make America Great Again (MAGA) base is getting messier and more crowded by the day.
"Over the next few months, Republicans are guaranteed to take exceedingly extreme positions on everything from banning abortion to cutting Social Security and Medicare and we look forward to continuing to ensure every American knows just how extreme the MAGA agenda is," Harrison said.
Before entering the presidential ballot, Ramaswamy and Haley have to win the Republican Party's presidential primary which will start in January next year.
The next US presidential election is scheduled to be held on November 5, 2024. Ramaswamy is the fourth Indian-American to run for the White House. Bobby Jindal ran in 2016 and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020.