Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, speaking with Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about China policy, told a packed audience at the Reuters building in Times Square just now that he will announce his candidacy for president next Tuesday.

The former ambassador to China under President Obama returned to the United States just in the last 2 months, a campaign apparatus having apparently already been set up for him by John Weaver, former strategist to John McCain in his centrist, “maverick” days. A relative moderate, Huntsman has in the past supported civil unions, an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, and cap-and-trade, though presumably he will retreat from most if not all of those positions as he caters to the conservative primary voters in New Hampshire and Florida.

Like Mitt Romney, Huntsman is a good-looking, Mormon millionaire. They would also appear to occupy the same center-right ideological space and are thus now on a collision course going forward.