Milloy statement at 3M annual meeting about the ‘Communist China Audit’ shareholder proposal

My statement is below. The proposal is here. My Wall Street Journal op-ed on this issue is here.

Good morning. My name is Steve Milloy.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine puts management and shareholders on notice: It’s not safe to do business in hostile totalitarian thug-ocracies

Major oil companies have been forced to withdraw from Russia and Big Oil has booked tens of billions of dollars in losses.

And more than Big Oil is losing money from bugging out of Russia.

General Electric took a $200 million charge.

McDonald’s is losing $50 million a month.

Netflix suspended service in Russia and lost 700,000 viewers, the first time in a decade its viewership has declined.

But this is all peanuts compared to what lies ahead with Communist China.

Consider the looming car wreck.

Communist China is a well-known serial violator of human, civil and political rights.

A million or more Uyghurs are in concentration camps.

Recall that IBM sold the Nazis the punchcards used to manage the Holocaust, some of which are on display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

Will 3M Post-It notes be in the Holocaust Museum one day?

It’s really shameful that we do business in Communist China at all.

But it gets worse.

Communist China intends to displace the US as the lone global superpower by 2049.

So what could go wrong doing business there?

Communist China may attempt to seize Taiwan by force.

The US is committed to defending Taiwan against such aggression.

US-China relations are also tense over a number of other issues including Communist China’s military expansion, actions related to the COVID pandemic,intellectual property theft, tariffs and, recently, solar panel dumping.

Communist China has said it would use its industrial capabilities for strategic purposes against adversaries.

Communist China has already taken action against Australian industries because the Australian government criticized Communist China over its disastrous management of COVID.

Recall 3M’s own fiasco with facemasks made in China at the start of the COVID pandemic.

Don’t forget, as a communist dictatorship, China lacks any sort of rule of law that would protects business interests located there.
We’ve all seen the significant ramifications of cutting ties with Russia.

Now imagine cutting them with China, where the US does 20 times more trade as it did with Russia.

Though Communist China is our nation’s chief global adversary, if not just flat-out enemy, management wants to just whistle past the graveyard.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission just announced it would start prodding US companies to disclose their reliance on Russia.

Can mandatory assessments and disclosures about Communist China be far behind?

3M has a significant presence in Communist China with almost 6,000 employees located there.

It is time for management to assess and disclose our exposure to China and, if necessary, to reduce, if not eliminate it.

America is on a collision course with Communist China, the Nazi Germany of the 21st century.

Let’s fix this problem now. Before it is too late.

Tell management to assess and disclose our reliance on Communist China.

Shareholders have the right to know.