January 1, DeSantis Takes a Stand Against China

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced that Florida will investigate its holdings in Chinese companies and “retake control of its shareholder proxy voting from ideology-crazed investment funds.”

DeSantis’ announcement came after a meeting with two State Board of Administration (SBA) trustees, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Attorney General Ashley Moody. The three trustees voted to implement several significant policy changes regarding how state funds are spent to “combat woke corporate ideology and malign foreign influence.”

“If you look at how these major companies behave when faced with Chinese disapproval, they censor what the CCP tells them to censor, and we see groveling apologies,” DeSantis said.

“Go back a generation, and the idea of the American elites was, ‘If we allow China into the WTO and give them most favored nation status, that will make China more like us.’ This experiment has failed, and it has endangered our nation’s national and economic security,” he added.

DeSantis said he wants the legislature to make statutory changes to prevent the Sunshine State from using taxpayer dollars to invest in China and bring manufacturing jobs to Florida instead of relying on Chinese goods.

The move also sends a message “to those in corporate America who prop up a genocidal, authoritarian, imperialist regime that they will not do so with Floridians’ money,” DeSantis said.

“A sad reality is that too many federal leaders for too long have been missing in action when it has come to holding China accountable. As Americans got our cheap goods, the Chinese government wasn’t playing by the rules when it came to intellectual property or trade. Meanwhile, they’ve been busy buying influence in Hollywood and Washington,” Patronis said. “Unfortunately, between COVID and the supply chain issues, we’ve seen how reliant our country has become on China.”

Patronis said the decision was “not only good for our country, but it is the financially prudent thing to do for our state.”

Source:

Florida taking action against Communist China and ‘woke’ corporations