Gov. Kristi Noem signed a bill that aims to prohibit state agencies from contracting with companies owned or controlled by what she calls “evil foreign governments.”
In the signing of Senate Bill 189, Noem said she's making a stance on business transactions between the state and certain foreign governments.
The list of prohibited governments consists of China, Cuba, Iran, Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.
Noem said passing the bill into law provides securities that other states will look to adopt in the future.
“You’ve seen other states follow South Dakota’s leads many times over. We were the state that started the action to ban TikTok and its application when it comes to the state and we saw dozens of states take action after that, and congress now,” said Noem.
Noem also clarified her reason for calling these countries evil.
“It is a part of their foreign policy to destroy the United States of America. Clearly through their actions that they take, the fact that they are not republics, not democratic countries that truly do embrace not only just human rights but also the rights and freedoms of the people that live there and the actions that they take to aggressively go after the United States of America as well shows their true colors of what their agenda would be,” said Noem.
Dr. John Stauff is the Assistant Vice President for International Affairs at SDSU. He said the bill could affect state universities’ ability to work with students and universities in countries listed in the bill, but other options exist.
“It impacts study abroad minimally, if we have a student who wants to learn Russian there are plenty of other countries in the world where Russian is taught and Russian communities exists for them to immerse in. We would send them to Kazakhstan instead of Moscow in Russian for example, same thing with China, instead of going to China we would go to Taiwan and send students there," said Stauff. "So, minimal impacts upon university work but we would not be engaging in partnership development with the universities in any of those countries at the moment.”
It’s unclear how many contracts the bill impacts.
