Florida will be taking action against the Chinese Communist Party and “woke corporations” operating in the state.
After meeting with two other State Board of Administration trustees Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Attorney General Ashley Moody, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that Florida will investigate the state’s holdings in Chinese companies and “retake control of its shareholder proxy voting from ideology-crazed investment funds,” according to Just the News.
DeSantis, Patronis and Moody comprise the state’s Board of Trustees and oversee the SBA, its two chief officials and its staff. All three voted to revoke all proxy voting previously given to outside fund managers and clarified that fund managers are only allowed to act in the financial interest of Florida’s funds. The three also said that they planned to conduct a survey of the Florida Retirement System’s investments to see how many assets the state has in Chinese companies.
DeSantis stated that “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. 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.”
Regarding his plan for the state legislature to pass laws preventing Florida from using taxpayer dollars to invest in China and to look for ways to bring jobs to the state, DeSantis said that “I also don’t think that our country as a whole, but certainly Florida, would like to see more production and manufacturing re-shored and we would be a great place to do that.”
Patronis said that “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. Unfortunately, between COVID and the supply chain issues, we’ve seen how reliant our country has become on China.”
Moody stated that “Chinese government control and influence over businesses operating in China should be a source of concern for anyone investing there. As fiduciaries, we should understand these risks and ensure they are being evaluated by the Florida Retirement System.”
