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DeSantis goes off on ‘hostile nation’ China, looks to ban it from buying land in Florida

January 11, 2023 | | Print Article

Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) is branding China a “hostile nation” and is warning them to stay out of the Sunshine State’s real estate market, telling the Chinese Communist Party their investments are not welcome in Florida.

(Video Credit: Forbes Breaking News)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced similar moves, banning foreign investors from buying real estate in his country for at least two years. The move is meant to cool down the overheated housing market in the country. Most of the foreign investors in Canada come from China and India.

DeSantis gave a speech on Tuesday making his views toward China crystal clear, “We don’t want to have holdings by hostile nations. If you look at the Chinese Communist Party, they’ve been very active throughout the Western Hemisphere in gobbling up land and investing in different things.”

He went on to state that it is not in Florida’s best interests to have “the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases,” and then asked why Americans would ever want the Communist Party owning “residential developments or subdivisions.”

DeSantis also stated that “they have interests that are opposed to ours.”

According to the US Department of Agriculture, foreign investors own 5.7 percent of privately owned farmland in Florida.

Under DeSantis’ leadership, the state legislature has passed laws forbidding the China-backed Confucius Institutes from funding research at state colleges in Florida. The infiltration into colleges by alleged Chinese spies is something that the governor took note of and vowed to stop. He believes that the Chinese funding efforts are part of an effort to “bring propaganda” to Florida by communists.

“I think we’re going to go even further on that. The legislature only went so far a couple years ago. I think they’re going to have an appetite to do more because [China’s] influence on our society has been very insidious,” DeSantis noted in his speech.

“It hurts [Florida]. It hurts our economic vitality, it hurts our security. When COVID hit, people needed all these supplies; I think like 100 percent of it was made in China. Why would you want to rely on a hostile nation for things that are integral for our quality of life and security?” the governor asked.

“This has been going on for many, many decades so disentangling from China, I think is something that is very, very significant going forward,” DeSantis remarked.

The Florida governor is also going after Chinese toys flooding the market.

“Santa Claus may need to not do Chinese toys. Make it here. Make it, honestly, anywhere. But not China,” he asserted.

DeSantis slammed Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, commenting that he had “taken a much more Marxist, Leninist turn since he’s been ruling China.”

“Obviously if someone comes in and buys, it’s not the CCP that’s signing this, these are holding companies and all that. But yes, we do not need to have CCP influence in Florida’s economy,” he contended.

“I think we have the 13th biggest economy in the world, if we were our own country in Florida, you know, we’re a force to be reckoned with,” the governor pointed out.

For some unfathomable reason, the US does not impose tax restraints on foreign buyers, according to the Wharton Business Journal of UPenn. Reportedly, approximately half of all properties that foreigners purchase in the US are used as primary residences, with the remainder used as vacation homes, secondary homes, or a flat that the owner will occasionally visit for various reasons.

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 58 percent of Chinese buyers paid for American properties with cash.

NAR published a report in July 2022 that shows that Chinese nationals were the largest foreign buyers of US homes between March 2021 and March 2022. Investors from China bought $6.1 billion worth of American land during that period, which is up 30 percent.

DeSantis also took aim at the World Economic Forum and its “environmental, social, and governmental” criteria that investment funds use to help calculate whether a company is worth investing in.

“Their vision is they run everything and everybody else is just like a serf, like a peasant. They say they’re going after energy, ESG, all these other things. You see the Biden administration wants to nix gas stoves. Are you kidding me? Like, we need — I want gas stoves,” he said.

“You cannot go down this road but that’s exactly what they want to do. And it’s really weakening Western society, Western values. But underlying a lot of that is the CCP. Those people are there, they’re elites, but, you know, Xi is really kind of the puppet behind the curtain on a lot of this stuff,” DeSantis concluded adding that Davos policies are “dead on arrival” in the state of Florida.

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