Earlier this week, Florida governor and Republican presidential contender Ron DeSantis announced his campaign’s new “Declaration of Economic Independence.” This policy blueprint might also have been titled a “Declaration of an Attempted Economic Synthesis,” since it illustrates how some Republicans are attempting to incorporate the policy and political disruption of the past decade into a new governing configuration.

The framing of DeSantis’s Declaration taps into populist rhetorical themes. It blames the nation’s supposed decline on a failed “ruling class.” It pledges to break with “Wall Street and big corporations who don’t have your interests front and center.” It proclaims independence from certain policies (“profligate federal spending” and “destructive policies like the Green New Deal”). It particularly stresses the need for independence from certain agents: “failed elites,” the “Chinese Community Party,” “central planners, and “progressive corporations.” In a rhetorical uppercut, the document says that the “goal of our declaration of economic independence is simple: We win. They lose.”

But this Declaration isn’t just about rhetoric. The DeSantis campaign is decisively breaking with the orthodoxies of the George W. Bush years. The document argues against expanded trade with China: “America has seen its industrial base hollowed out, developed a dangerous dependence on Chinese supply chains, and witnessed the exposure of American companies to a hostile security apparatus.” As with many other “realignment”-oriented documents, the Declaration cites both economic and geopolitical reasons for reconfiguring the trade relationship with the PRC. DeSantis seeks to “end China’s preferential trade status” and pledges to put limits on the sharing of technology with the PRC as well as to encourage the repatriation of American capital from Beijing.