Exclusive: Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley Shares Her Vision For The U.S., Agriculture
Nikki Haley, a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, joined AgriTalk on Tuesday to share her plans for the U.S. and U.S. agriculture if successful in her run for president.
Haley is a former ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina.
AgriTalk has extended an invitation to all presidential candidates to join Host Chip Flory and answer five standard questions about what they would do if elected. That information follows below. You can also listen to the full conversation between Haley and Flory here:
Q1: What’s your motivation to be President? Why do you want the job?
A: The long answer to that is that my parents came here 50 years ago to an America that was strong and proud and full of opportunity. I want them to know that country again. I'm doing this for my husband, who is a combat veteran and who’s currently deployed. I'm doing it for him and his military brothers and sisters, because they need to know their sacrifice matters. They need to know that we love our country.
I'm also doing this for my daughter who just got married. I saw how hard it was for her and her husband to own a home. The average homebuyer right now is 49 years old. And I'm doing this for my son who's a senior in college. I'm tired of watching him write papers and things he doesn't believe in just to get an A. That's not us.
Right now, 81% of Americans don't think their kids are going to have as good of a life as we did. We can't be OK with that. I'm not OK with that. I think we have a country to save, and I'm determined to do it.
Q2: What’s the No. 1 issue or challenge for America? How and when will you address it as President?
A: I think the first thing we have to do is end this national self-loathing that's taken over our country – the idea that they say America is bad or rotten or racist. Our kids need to know to love America, they need to be saying the Pledge of Allegiance when they start school every day. And once we get that national self-loathing out of the way, we can start focusing on the economy and getting inflation back on track. We can start focusing on getting our kids reading again and going back to the basics with education. We can start focusing on securing our border with no more excuses. We can start focusing on law and order in our country, and we can start focusing on a strong America that we can all be proud of.
Q3: Let’s talk rural America, agriculture, farming and ranching. What issues will you address as President?
A: Well, you know, I grew up in an agricultural state, and I was governor of an agricultural state. So, I know the challenges. The first thing would be to get the EPA out of the way. Right now, they care more about sagebrush lizards than they do about whether we can afford our utility bill. Then, we need to start seeing producers as the partners that they are. Food security is national security; that's always been the case, and we can't ever be OK with getting our food from overseas. We have to make sure not only do we have enough food produced here in America, but that we have more than enough that we can export overseas so we can make it the powerhouse that we know it can be.
That's the same with energy. You've got biofuels here in Iowa, and it's hugely important that we see that for the opportunity that it is. So the biggest thing is, get the EPA out of the way, and let producers know that we're partners and support them through the process. The one thing I saw in South Carolina is farmers are the ultimate survivors. They can't control the weather, they can't control pricing. So, the last thing they need is to … have government go and put other mandates on them, whether it's water, whether it's anything else. We've got to stop all that.
Q4: Describe your energy and renewable energy policy plans.
A: First of all, things that Russia, China and Iran never wanted us to have are a strong military, and they didn't want us to be energy independent. I don't want to be energy independent. I want to be energy dominant. We need to make sure that we do that by getting the EPA out of the way. We should roll back Washington's old rules dictating when we can sell E15 fuel. The rules don't make sense anymore, and we should get rid of them.
As president, I'll roll back all of the Biden administration’s green mandates, especially the ones on electric cars that he's trying to force on us. And when we start to focus on that, then we can see what economic incentives we have to make sure that we grow biofuels and biodiesel in a way we can export it. Let consumers decide which fuels they prefer. I think that's the biggest thing. I'll be completely supportive of Iowans and completely supportive of biofuels, and that includes supporting the Renewable Fuel Standard.
Q5: How will businesses small and large view the fiscal policies of a Haley administration?
A: If you put an accountant in the White House magic happens (Haley has a bachelor of science degree in accounting and finance from Clemson University). I will tell you that we are $34 trillion in debt, and we're having to borrow money just to make our interest payments. China owns some of that debt. What we need to do is we need to stop the wasteful spending. We're seeing that in both Republicans and Democrats.
The first thing that we'll do is we'll stop the spending, we'll stop the borrowing. I'll eliminate all these pet projects, and I'll veto any spending bill that doesn't take us back to pre-Covid levels. Secondly, we'll move as many federal programs as we can to the state level. That way, you're reducing the size of the federal government, but you're empowering people on the ground and moving more of those resources to let the people decide how best to use them. Then, we want to let the middle class breathe, and the way we'll let the middle class breathe is we will eliminate the federal gas and diesel tax in this country.
Then, we'll cut taxes on the middle class and simplify the brackets, and then we'll make sure that we make the small business tax cuts permanent. They made corporate tax cuts permanent, but they made small business tax cuts temporary. We'll stop double-taxing farmers the way they are right now, which is keeping them from having generational farms taking place. When you do those types of things that's when you really get spending back on track. You get inflation under control, and you help those that really need it. I know small businesses are the heartbeat of our economy. We need to start acting like it.
Q: On trade policy, former President Trump says he's going to invoke at least a 10% tariff on all imports into the U.S. Is that something you would consider?
A: No, because you can't. When you do that you're costing Americans more money. The time you want to apply tariffs is when you're dealing with an adversary, when you're dealing with a situation where you need to go and make sure that you're making things harder for them. We need to do more trade with more friends, and we need to do it in a way that we're exporting as much as we possibly can. As governor, I focused on how to (help) businesses export as much as they could. As president, it should be no different. I would be the No. 1 salesperson of American products, of American produce, of American things.
If you just start doing tariffs on everybody, guess what? They do it right back to you, and then everybody suffers the consequences. So, you have to be strategic. You have to be smart. That's when you can make sure that it's more of an advantage and you use it as leverage. You don't just use it as an across-the-board plan.
To date, along with Ambassador Haley, AgriTalk has also talked with presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis. That conversation is available here:
