By Gabriel Perry-The Laconia Daily Sun
Lily Tang Williams, a Republican with strong libertarian leanings, is running against Democrat Maggie Goodlander for the congressional seat in District 2. She lives in Weare and runs Middle Kingdom Estates, a real estate and property management firm. She obtained a law degree in China, her home country, and serves in court as an expert witness on Chinese affairs. She’s also a professional speaker.
During a wide-ranging discussion, Tang Williams spoke to her support for strict tariffs on Chinese imports, described nuanced positions on the Israeli-Palestinian war, climate change and abortion, and expressed her concern regarding the criminalization of cannabis possession at the federal level vis-a-vis varying state legislation.
Tang Williams said she believes strongly that abortion should be left to each state to work out but that there should be a high-degree of empathy afforded to women navigating a pregnancy.
“I truly believe this is a state issue. I would not vote at the federal level either for, against or in-between,” Tang Williams said. “I want the federal government not to get involved in lots of state issues, and I trust the people in New Hampshire to vote and decide on this issue through their representative government. Right now we have legal abortion access up to six months in the pregnancy.”
She said the empowerment of women to make their own decisions is paramount and that social service organizations should be relied upon.
“I always wanted to empower women to make well-informed decisions when it comes to this critical, crisis time in their lives, and I want the private charities to help them out,” she said. “There are lots of crisis pregnancy centers that will help the young ladies and women who need financial assistance and counseling, but, fundamentally, it’s not a federal issue.”
On climate change, Tang Williams said she believes it does exist and that Americans are generally more supportive of conservation than citizens of her home country.
Lily Tang Williams photo by Jennifer Hauck/Valley News
“Climate change is real because it is actually constantly changing,” she said. “I believe Americans are the most friendly environmental-loving people in the world — it’s not China.”
She said there must be a difficult balance achieved between protecting the environment and ensuring the economy is unimpeded.
“I would like to see the environment to be clean, to be protected,” she said. “But we also do not want to have lots of mandates to destroy jobs creation and the economy, and the government mandates sometimes will jack up prices and make inflation even more horrible when the young people, right now, already cannot afford lots of things — that’s the number one issue right now on the minds of lots of people in [the 2nd Congressional District].”
On housing, Tang Williams said young people are discouraged regarding the prospects of owning property and that they need to believe in the old-school American dream again.
“Many of my volunteers live in the basement with their mom and dad or rent a cheap room from their family. They feel like they cannot afford to rent or buy to move out and they have no shot at the American Dream, which is very sad because I have lived the American Dream,” Tang Williams said. “When you have a very limited supply but you have a huge demand in New Hampshire, then you have a problem.”
Tang Williams said inflation is a core issue that influences the cost of housing, and federal spending must be curtailed.
“At the federal level, the inflation is high because the government is printing money,” she said. “When they print money, flooding the market with lots of U.S. dollars, it naturally would devalue our purchasing power, so the inflation is taxation without legislation.”
Tang Williams said trade protections for domestic industry against Chinese policy are necessary because they do not have Americans best interests at heart and will trade unfairly.
“I normally support free trade. When it comes to my native country of China, because I know what’s going on there, I know how they operate in terms of dumping stuff all over the western countries by subsidizing their products. Most of those companies are state enterprises so they are connected to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], and they all have to comply with CCP requirements and also provide all of the consumers' data to the government,” Tang Williams said. “I think it’s only justified when it comes to tariffs on Chinese products, because actually it’s involved with our national security. Our national security is at stake.”
And Tang Williams said the Biden-Harris foreign policy has been a failure and made the U.S. appear weak on a world stage.
“Innocent people are the biggest victims of any wars, and under the Biden-Harris administration, I think they’ve shown the world they’re weak,” she said. “ I condemn the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, and I would like to offer the Israeli people emotional, diplomatic and moral support. At the same time, I always like to promote peace — my foreign policy is peace through strength.”
She said the U.S. should continue to support Israel in its war with Hamas but have a duty to provide humanitarian aid to those affected by the conflict.
“Emotionally and morally, we need to support our allies and stand with them and offer cooperation, but my heart goes to all of the innocent people who are involved,” she said. “We do have a role to provide humanitarian aid.”
And Tang Williams said she believes decriminalization of cannabis is a good thing and that federal law conflicts with state law, causing all manner of problems and issues.
“Philosophically, I believe people can put some medicine, herbs, into their body, to choose that. We should not treat them as criminals, so decriminalization in our state is a good thing,” she said. “At the federal level, I just don’t get why it’s been a Schedule [1] drug for years and years. It’s really caused a lot of problems between the federal government and the state governments.”
These articles are being shared by partners in theGranite State News Collaborativeand the Know Your Vote youth voter guide. The Know Your Vote youth voter guide project was designed, reported and produced by student and young professional journalists from The Clock,The Concord Monitor, The Equinox, Granite State News Collaborative, Keene State College, The Laconia Daily Sun, The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, Nashua Ink Link and The Presidency and the Press program at Franklin Pierce University. You can see the full guide at www.collaborativenh.org/know-your-vote.