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Aug. 6, 2025 - Epoch Times
21:42
How One State Is Taking on the Chinese Communist Party: Oklahoma’s Gov. Kevin Stitt
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Time Text
Now, I've signed MOUs with Taiwan and the UK and multiple other countries.
They're going to the states now because Congress is so dysfunctional, it's so political, it's so partisan that they're literally coming directly to the states.
And I have an international strategy where I've met with 80 different ambassadors to put Oklahoma on their radar.
In this episode, I sit down with the 28th governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt.
to learn about how he's reducing a state's vulnerabilities and dependency on communist China.
We should have a critical mineral stockpile in the U.S. We should be developing relationships with Africa and South America, China is doing those kinds of things, and we have to make sure we can keep up with the demands of the next century.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekelek.
Governor Kevin Stitt, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Well, thank you so much for having me here.
It's an honor to be with you.
Well, I want to talk about your activities countering the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese regime itself.
But before we go there, I want to talk a little bit about gardening, because I noticed that this is something that you're actually quite serious about.
And having interviewed over a thousand people on this show, I've noticed people that do that, are somehow involved with the land.
tend to be a little more on the grounded side, but just tell me a little bit about this, the gardening aspect of your life.
Sure, absolutely.
Well, my grandfather had an eighth grade education, was a dairy farmer from the northeast part of Oklahoma.
So I loved going up and hanging out on the ranch and on the farm with grandfather, and he always had a big garden, so as a little kid I didn't really appreciate it as much because he was having me help with weed it and that kind of stuff.
But as an adult now, it's just so fun to raise vegetables and be out there and show your children how to plant seeds and grow crops.
And it's not a big garden, but it's, man, you'll be surprised how many tomatoes and potatoes and onions and corn you can grow.
And so then I just started posting it as governor and everybody seems to like it.
It's hard.
Even the Democrats like it, Republicans.
It's hard to complain about someone that's out there making Oklahoma healthy again.
And then I was honored.
I had Secretary Kennedy came to Oklahoma as we launched some health initiatives in our state.
And he had seen it.
And so he wanted to go to my garden.
And so it was fun having Bobby Kennedy there helping me dig up potatoes.
And then we posted that.
And it's just a lot of fun.
And then we're just encouraging, you know, being more healthy in our state.
And I think that's something that as leaders, I just want to try to do and it's something I like to do.
Just to use this make America healthy again or make Oklahoma healthy again, Monica, does this mean you're kind of deeply part of this approach that Secretary Kennedy is promoting?
Yeah, you know, one of the things that we thought, we asked for a waiver from the USDA.
So snap benefits, which Oklahoma spends about $2 billion on food insecurity.
And so we wanted that to go towards more nutritional food and not for sugary drinks like sodas and candy.
And so she's going to sign that waiver, we believe.
And then more money will go further to actually, you know, provide more nutritional value to our citizens of Oklahoma.
So we're doing things like that.
Obviously, promoting exercise.
I do the marathon every single year and I do a relay team and we're just promoting health in the state of Oklahoma.
So that's basically the purpose.
We did pull out food dyes from state-sponsored meals, like meals going into our education system, our K-12, into our correctional facilities.
We're trying to cook that, you know, more farm-to-table type stuff and not put all the artificial dyes in there.
We think that's something we're taking off of Robert Kennedy and what he's pushing nationally.
Well, let me jump to the thing that made me aware of your work in particular, and that's this executive order you passed in 2024, countering the CCP malign influence and preparing for the Indo-Pacific conflict.
It's somewhat unusual, somewhat comprehensive, and just give me a sense of why you felt this is something that was important to do for Oklahoma in particular.
I was the governor during COVID and we saw this supply chain disruption and we saw a lot of problems and backlogs and I think that put on everybody's radar what decision What does society look like if we can't get some of the things that we rely on on a daily basis.
And so, you know, I've got advisors that have done some research and they're looking at some of the potential conflicts, to your point, with China.
And if there is some kind of conflict between Taiwan and China, it could make the COVID pandemic times 20 as far as supply chains.
And so we were trying to ask all of our state agencies, hey, y'all do a deep dive to see what would it take?
What would happen with state government if we did lose some of that supply chain with some kind of conflict over there?
And so that was the purpose of it.
We just wanted people to be aware.
We wanted to start unplugging.
I think that also helps us, you know, nationally, it's a national defense, it's a national interest for us to bring the supply chain closer to home.
It also helps us target certain things and promote economic development in our state.
We just landed the largest aluminum smeltering company that's going to be built in the state of Oklahoma.
They haven't built a new smelter for 45 years.
We're leaning into critical minerals in our state.
We want Oklahoma to be the critical mineral capital of the United States.
We've got tons of companies that are moving here for new processes and things that Americans take for granted, we have to bring that supply chain closer to home, whether it's batteries or magnets and the things that go into every part of our life, chips, all those kind of things.
You know, you're also divesting state assets and pension holdings that might be compromised by a future Pacific conflict.
I mean, there's also the state procurement.
supply chains themselves right that you're looking at there's there's a lot of elements in here that's right yeah i mean when we're asking those state agencies to really look at their procurement and who they're buying from and what that looks like to make sure that we can source from other sources, even if that's maybe the best deal right now, we have to have backups.
We're just trying to think ahead.
You can't start that process if there was, God forbid, some kind of conflict.
How hard is it to enact or how hard was it or is it to enact this actually?
Because it's one thing to say it.
It's another thing to get the system to actually do it.
If you don't have to deal with the legislature, you don't have to pass laws, it makes it a little easier on the executive branch.
So the agencies that we can control and when a governor puts an executive order in place, then those agencies, that becomes something that they have got to do.
It becomes kind of a law for them to focus on.
Now the problem with executive orders versus legislation is the next governor, if he doesn't continue that executive order, it goes away.
And so that's the problem that you deal with.
So obviously I always am encouraging my legislature to codify some of these make sense executive orders that I've put in place.
But for speed, we're always trying to do things quicker.
I come from the business world.
We want Oklahoma to move at the speed of business.
And sometimes, you know, democracy and the debating of bills and writing bills and it can and then you've got all the detractors and you've got lobbyists trying to kill the bill that is going to affect them but but as an executive we we know how to make Oklahoma top 10 and how to protect Oklahoma in the future and we're trying to get that done quickly and efficiently of course Oklahoma has a special relationship with Taiwan and that's something I wasn't even fully aware of that until recently until
into it.
How does that impact your decision-making?
Yeah, you know, I mean, they're obviously great allies of the U.S. and we have a lot of trade back and forth.
I actually...
The sister state Yeah, that's right.
Since 1980 or something.
Yeah, that's right.
We share ideas.
I actually just took a trip over to Taiwan, had a great time.
We went to Japan as well, South Korea.
So those are very important trading partners.
You're seeing a lot of countries now.
I've signed MOUs with Taiwan and the UK and multiple other countries.
They're going to the States now because Congress is so dysfunctional.
It's so political.
It's so partisan that they're literally coming directly to the States.
And I have an international strategy where I've met with eighty different ambassadors to put Oklahoma on their radar.
So in other words, if you want a U.S. presence, If you're looking for a new manufacturing facility, distribution facility, if you want to get into the U.S. market, you've got to look at Oklahoma because for distribution purposes, cost of living, quality of life, labor cost, but because what I found is sometimes companies, all they watch is Hollywood, so all they know is New York or LA.
And I'm like, that's the worst place to set up a business.
You come to a place that's most business friendly, and that's Oklahoma.
And so I love my strategy with internationally.
But I'm sure that communist China has also come calling to your call, so to speak.
I mean, you've got legislation now to restrict the use of farmland.
It's actually an interesting.
land.
It's actually an interesting question.
Was that actually a big problem before that legislation was passed and signed by you into law?
It was.
And basically, it came out from the medical marijuana industry.
So we had a state question before I got elected that authorized marijuana as a medicine.
But really what happened, anybody with a hangnail can get a medical marijuana card.
And so it's really turned into recreational.
Like you have to have a card, but it's so simple to get that.
So what we saw is we saw some of the Chinese nationals coming in buying land, setting up these marijuana farms, and so we've really had to crack down on that because the industry popped up overnight after a state question, and it took a while to get the regulations in control and get the to be able to do the secret shoppers and be able to make sure that we have control over that industry.
So we've had to crack down heavily on that.
You know, when you think about buying farmland and around some of our critical infrastructure, we have Tinker Air Force Base, which is the largest maintenance and repair facility for the entire world.
So it maintains all the Air Force fleet.
It's right there in Oklahoma City.
We need to be eyes wide open with some of our adversaries buying land around some of these critical infrastructure.
Then you think about our energy grid.
It was exacerbated, I think, after the Biden's open border policies and Trump has shut that down.
When you look and you talk to his cabinet on how many people came into the country illegally, it can be concerning.
We view this as a way of actually of drug warfare by the Chinese Communist Party against America using all these tools to kind of, well, basically get rid of.
military aged males would be one way to say it.
You don't want to be too much of a conspiracy theorist, but when you play the long game and Fit and All is destroying our country, it absolutely could be a strategy of those folks to try to get to your point, the young men addicted to this stuff.
It's horrible.
I hate the marijuana industry.
I'm sure there's certain cases where it's maybe helping someone from a pain management standpoint, but it's certainly overused in my state, and I'm sure it is in others.
Well, and we've done a number of episodes on this topic.
The marijuana today is something completely different than the marijuana 30 years ago.
It's a highly potent drug, causes psychosis.
I mean, it's a whole different breed.
Are you aware of the CCP trying to influence, well, you or other people in government or industry, various industries in America?
Well, not me.
I mean, I've shut them down.
They don't reach out to me.
We've heard about some of the things in our universities.
We take a deep dive and make sure that's not in Oklahoma, but we've seen that.
We've seen that pop up in other states.
Listen, our economy is so much better than theirs.
We've got them on the ropes.
We don't need to give them a lifeline.
We don't need to continue allowing them to buy and develop land, especially around some of our critical infrastructure.
On your trip to Asia, you mentioned Taiwan, I think it was Japan, I think South Korea as well, if that's right.
Yeah.
Was part of the discussion basically trying to deal with some of these vulnerabilities with those types of partnerships?
Well, part of it was, you know, it's a trade mission.
How can we trade more together?
And how can they unplug from their reliance on China, whether it's energy and, you know, oil?
and gas, agricultural products.
So yeah, I mean, Oklahoma obviously is a huge natural gas state.
So LNG, how do we get that?
How do we get more LNG to you from?
I think they're buying from Russia right now.
They've got a contract that's expiring.
Since we've left, they've signed some more agreements with the U.S. But, you know, obviously the proximity to China over there is, you know, that's the big 800-pound guerrilla for them.
And they need to know that they've got an ally that they can support.
That's why the left's policies on LNG.
You saw President Biden pause LNG exports.
Well, guys, that only hurts our allies and it drives them into the arms of, you know, of China and Russia and people that maybe don't like us very much and it enriches them.
And so our allies need to know that we're there for them.
And so that's part of the reason we make those trips to see how we can help, what are their needs are.
And then also how do we do educational exchanges?
Have our students going doing some exchanges on maybe getting to studying abroad and inviting their students to come to Oklahoma State or University of Oklahoma.
A key thing that needs to happen, in my view, to do this, let's call it decoupling or reducing the dependency or however you want to describe it on communism, is the reindustrialization.
You mentioned earlier in the interview, building a smelter here in Oklahoma.
How are Oklahoma policies right now encouraging that process?
I'm glad you're bringing that up because we in the 80s or the 70s or the 60s, the United States is the one that has developed a lot of these processes, mineral to magnet processes.
And so how did we lose that?
And we lose all this manufacturing expertise, critical mineral manufacturing over to China because we said it was maybe too dirty or messy or whatever.
And so now we know the mistake of that and we're trying to bring that back.
So the way Oklahoma approaches it is if you're the most business-friendly state and you deregulate and you make sure that you have make sense regulations and you're not playing gotcha with companies, then they're going to show up in your state.
So we have USA Rare Earth.
We've got Green Lion.
We've got Blue Whale.
We've got all the battery companies coming.
We've got new battery companies that are making lithium and phosphorus type materials that are going to go into the new type of batteries instead of the cobalt nickel type stuff.
So they're coming to Oklahoma because our Department of Environmental Quality is going to give them a permit quicker.
We're not going to beat them up on those things.
And so you see other states that are really driving businesses away by over-regulating, over-taxing.
And we take the opposite approach.
If you have a business coming to your state, investing capital, building buildings, hiring people, that's good for your economy.
That helps education and infrastructure and health care.
Everything happens when we get investments coming into our state.
So we want to reward entrepreneurs, we want to thank them for coming and they're finding great quality of life in our state.
And so that's kind of our approach to it.
And the critical mineral thing is a huge deal.
I wrote an article about we should have a critical mineral stockpile in the US.
We should be developing relationships with mines in Africa and South America.
China's doing those kind of things and we have to develop those relationships to make sure we can keep up with the demands of the next century.
And to your point, right?, we know as a fact that they're actually using their kind of stranglehold on rare earths right now as leverage against what the U.S. is trying to do.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, they're flooding the market.
They're price fixing on their side.
And so a normal commercial user is going where the cheaper price is, right, to build their products.
The DOD though is really, whether it's the Biden administration or the Trump administration, they recognize that and they're trying to subsidize to get some of these industries started.
And so China really with their price manipulation is making it difficult to, you know, to mine nickel and cobalt and some of the different critical minerals.
But we do have the DOD saying, hey, we have a goal to get this purchased in the US or our allies versus versus some of our adversaries.
Well, and when you have the ability to dump below cost, I mean, this has basically been a strategy over whether it's through Huawei when talking even high tech, right, cellular infrastructure and so forth.
If you can make it half the price or whatever because it's part of your national security strategy, that's a bit of a different game, isn't it?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
No, you're you're one hundred percent right.
Are you planning more action to kind of protect the state from the Chinese Communist Party.
Is there some things you can kind of tease for us that you're working on now?
I think Trump's policies are really helping states push back and now getting in getting control of who is in our state.
I think all of that is working to the benefit of the American people.
So I really want to give Trump, I mean, he's taken a lot of bullets for that.
But securing our border and making this immigration an issue is so, so important for us.
You know, I'll talk to our team and if there's any there's further things that we're doing or if we see them getting more aggressive, then sure.
I'll be I want to be the first governor that acts on these makes sense policies.
Wonderful.
Well, governor, this has been a wonderful interview.
Final thought as we finish?
Well, we're here at the Broadmoor at the National Governor Association and my initiative as the chairman is the American dream, reigniting the American dream.
And I think we cannot lose sight of we have the greatest country in the world.
And we have something different here and unique that it doesn't matter where you're born or who you're born to or the circumstances of your birth.
You can chase your American dream.
You can accomplish anything that your imaginations will allow you to as long as you're willing to work hard for it.
And so we want to teach that to the next generation.
And a lot of that has to do with education, but also energy, security and reliability and affordability.
and then a free market economy.
it's the exact opposite of communist controlled China and so we need to teach our young people the difference there's no such thing as equal outcomes.
We want equal opportunities.
We want everybody to chase their American dream and everybody's dreams are different.
I'm going to be telling these American dream stories over the next year and I've lived the American dream from starting a business with $1,000 in a computer and growing it to a nationwide company over 1,000 employees to then running for governor.
And so we want to teach those young people and the next generation that it's alive and well for another 250 years.
Well, and I'll just mention this because this resonates so strongly with me.
You know, our founders were Chinese Americans who escaped communist China came to America and built this company out of nothing without any help, actually with a lot of interference from the Chinese regime all the way along and built one of the largest media companies in America out of nothing.
So I hope you could include well, I need their number because those are the stories we're going to tell.
We interviewed Mark Cuban and we want to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And I love the stories of people, even immigrants coming here and chasing their American dream.
And it's not like that.
And even in Europe, you don't have the ability.
It's more of a class system, right?
Who are your parents?
And it's hard to break out.
But in America, it doesn't matter who you're born to.
You can achieve your American dream.
Well, look forward to working with you on that, Governor.
It's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much.
Thank you all for joining Governor Kevin Stedd and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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