The State of Florida will investigate its holdings in Chinese companies and retake control of its shareholder proxy voting from ideology-crazed investment funds
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Today, Governor Ron DeSantis held a meeting of the State Board of Administration where he, CFO Jimmy Patronis, and Attorney General Ashley Moody moved to revoke all proxy voting authority that has been given to outside fund managers, to clarify the state’s expectation that all fund managers should act solely in the financial interest of the state’s funds, and to conduct a survey of all of the investments of the Florida Retirement System to determine how many assets the state has in Chinese companies.
“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,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “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.
“I would like the SBA to survey the investments that are currently being done. When the legislature comes back they can make statutory changes to say that the Communist Party of China is not a vehicle that we want to be entangled with. I think that that would be something that would be very, very prudent. I also 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.”
By retaking control of the state pension fund’s proxy voting from outside fund managers who may pursue social ideologies inconsistent with the state’s values or the financial interests of the state’s investments, and by determining the state’s exposure to Chinese investments, the actions taken today will further strengthen Florida’s fiscal footing and signal to those in corporate America who prop up a genocidal, authoritarian, imperialist regime that they will not do so with Floridians’ money.
