Jon Huntsman, Jr.
Jon Huntsman, Jr.
Jon Meade Huntsman Jr.is an American politician, businessman, and diplomat who served as the 16th Governor of Utah from 2005 to 2009, and as United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1992 to 1993, and China from 2009 to 2011. He has served in the administrations of five U.S. Presidents and was a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. In January 2014, Huntsman was named chairman of the Washington-based foreign policy think-tank the Atlantic Council...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth26 March 1960
CountryUnited States of America
And the trajectory that our debt is taking now beyond $14 trillion is going to have an impact on our currency. It goes south, and our currency's going to have an impact on our standard of living and affect every family in this country, and over time, our international competitiveness.
What is important is that you're honest with the American people.
I'm surprised that we've gotten to a point where we don't put our country first and put our party first.
If you can't define a winning exit strategy for the American people, where we somehow come out ahead, then we're wasting our money, and we're wasting our strategic resources.
I had the trade minister in China sit down as we were preparing for trade negotiations. He said, 'Please don't let people in the United States lose their confidence because when you lose your confidence, the rest of the world suffers'.
I can't stomach the thought that we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less viable, less good, less competitive, less compassionate than the one we got.
You can be stern and forthright, and that's my management style, but when you lose it totally, that's a sign of weakness.
Normal people don't just wake up in the morning and say I think it'd be a good idea to run for president of the United States.
We have lost that which has made us great over the generations, and that is the sense of individual and personal responsibility that we can come up, we can pursue our dreams and our aspirations and we won't be blocked by government regulation, by the inability to get a loan as a small business to make our dreams come true.
My sense is that we're ready for another industrial revolution in this country. The great minds and innovators of Silicon Valley would come through China and say, The pipeline is full of ideas - there's personalized medicine, biotechnology, new forms to power ourselves, clean energy, etc., etc.
When America closes its doors, so does everybody else. We are the primary engine of growth in the world and we are the only beacon of free trade left, and open markets.
That's what governors do, they wrestle with the issues, they find solutions and they move the agenda forward. At the appropriate time we'll talk about all of these issues, while remembering that our party is a big tent party. We lose when we try to become exclusive to one particular set of issues.
Economic prosperity and quality education for our children are inexorably linked.
This is the marketplace of political ideas. This is how America operates. It's a free market. It's free-wheeling. From the outside, it looks unpredictable. There's a circus-like free market.