China’s increasing economic, military and technological power continues to pose the greatest long-term threat to the United States and the international community. We cannot simply rely on career politicians in Washington, D.C., to combat this threat, and therefore must act at the state level.
We must protect Hoosier land, Hoosier intellectual property, private information and Hoosier health and lives. We must also go on economic offense by continuing to lean into the strengths of our skilled workforce and world-class academic institutions to bolster Indiana’s role in ensuring the United States’ independence from China in the semiconductor industry.
That is exactly what my Combating China plan will do.
As governor, I will work with the state legislature to ban countries that pose a threat to the United States, such as China, from purchasing real property in Indiana, including farmland and commercial and retail property. This will extend to Chinese nationals and majority-owned or controlled China-based firms
As governor, I will prohibit the state’s public higher education institutions from licensing university-owned intellectual property to Chinese-owned firms. Additionally, I will instruct the appropriate state agencies to prioritize the investigation of alleged intellectual property theft and work with the state legislature to strengthen penalties against the practice of stealing Hoosier intellectual property, including U.S. firms that use predominately Chinese-manufactured parts and mislabel the resale of its products as made in the United States.
Although the state has made progress in this effort by banning TikTok on state devices and in the state system, I will expand this prohibition to any device or system purchased with state dollars. Additionally, if state efforts to ban the app are successful, such as the effort in Montana, I will work with the state legislature to pass similar legislation into law.
Due to Washington, D.C., inaction on border security, majority-owned and controlled Chinese firms are shipping precursor chemicals to the United States and other countries for the manufacturing of fentanyl, which eventually finds its way across the United States. This places increased burdens on states in regard to healthcare, public safety and productivity, and takes the lives of too many citizens.
As proposed in my Protect and Serve plan, I will pursue the creation of regional, multi-disciplinary task forces that cross jurisdictional lines to act as a force multiplier in the fight to tackle the fentanyl epidemic. These task forces will be permitted to investigate deaths attributable to synthetic opioids as homicides, enabling them to target fentanyl dealers and traffickers more efficiently and effectively.
China’s dominance of the supply chain for semiconductors represents an economic and national security threat.
As governor, I will continue to leverage Indiana’s world-class advanced manufacturing sector to further attract semiconductor manufacturing facilities, which became a state economic development priority during my tenure as Secretary of Commerce after the passage of U.S. Senator Todd Young’s CHIPS Act. Additionally, I will continue to support the United States’ independence from China in this vital industry by supporting the continued growth of the state’s academic and technical semiconductor training programs.
My Combating China plan will ensure we protect Indiana and Hoosiers against foreign adversaries, including and especially China’s intellectual property theft, callous distribution of deadly fentanyl and the hypnotizing effects of TikTok while prioritizing Indiana’s competitiveness in the global economy and defending against the failures of the D.C. career politicians.