Press Release
National Center for Public Policy Research Free Enterprise Project (FEP)
Washington, D.C. – Ahead of next week’s Apple, Inc. annual shareholder meeting, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) is urging Apple investors to support its shareholder proposal requesting a “China Entanglement Audit.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, FEP Executive Director Steve Milloy will explain how an audit assessing the risks and costs associated with the company’s involvement with China has the potential to reveal “how tangled up with Communist China the company is.”
Entanglement with China is clearly an existential corporate and national security risk. Should tensions increase or hostilities break out between the U.S. and Communist China, we shareholders could very well bear the brunt of that existential risk in the value of Apple stock. Per Apple’s most recent disclosure statement, substantially all of Apple’s hardware manufacturing is done in China and in China’s immediate neighbors.
China has all but promised to invade Taiwan. What would happen if the U.S. defended Taiwan? Does anyone believe Communist China would not retaliate, including with sanctions, export bans and confiscations of shareholder assets in China? And what would happen to the supply chains with China’s neighbors? Would China leave those alone?
China would also like to be the lone global superpower by 2049. Taiwan is not the only possible flashpoint. It’s scary stuff. Yet management continues to depend on China while leaving shareholders in the dark about the risks….
Knowing the risks is a “no brainer.” Management buries its head in the sand at our peril.
