Despite his strong rhetoric condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s trade practices, Rep. Byron Donalds’s (R-FL) gubernatorial campaign has accepted $450,000 in donations from a refrigerant importer that is partially owned by a Chinese state-controlled enterprise and stands accused of harming domestic businesses by flooding the market with cheap Chinese imports and avoiding import duties.
“Everybody knows that China not only has cheated in any trade negotiation … that’s ever occurred, but they also cheat when it comes to actually going through the proper channels on how trade is supposed to be handled,” Donalds, the Republican front-runner in Florida’s gubernatorial primary, said in April.
Florida campaign finance records show that Donalds took multiple six-figure donations from iGas and its Chinese-born CEO over the course of June 2025. Zhejiang Juhua, a company controlled by China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, owns a 34% stake in iGas, according to lobbying disclosures. Zhejiang Juhua has been involved with iGas since the beginning, with media reports identifying it as a founding partner of the Florida-based firm.
Beyond ownership ties, iGas has also engaged in activity commonly identified by China hawks as one way Beijing weakens American industry.
The American HFC Coalition, a trade association representing domestic refrigerant manufacturers, accused iGas of dumping cheaply manufactured, unapproved Chinese refrigerants into the U.S. market, thus violating regulations meant to protect domestic producers and consumers, in a 2021 letter to the Environmental Protection Agency.
U.S. trade officials clearly saw some merit in these complaints, as they approved additional import taxes on an array of cheap Chinese refrigerators following the HFC Coalition’s letter. iGas’s American competitors later accused the firm of using workarounds to evade paying the additional trade duties on these chemicals — a move reminiscent of the shady Chinese trade practices Donalds complained about in April.
The EPA has since fined companies run by Xiaben Meng, iGas’s CEO, hundreds of thousands of dollars for failing to report the quantities of refrigerants brought in from China.
iGas has a history of extracting concessions from the politicians it supports. A 2023 Miami Herald investigation found that Florida politicians who took money from the refrigerant importer often went on to advocate directly on its behalf. In one case, a GOP congressman wrote a letter to the EPA mirroring language used by the company itself in correspondence with the agency.
Donalds has long presented himself as a strong critic of the CCP. As a congressman, he has described China as America’s “top hegemonic adversary,” advocated the use of tariffs to pressure Beijing into restricting the flow of fentanyl precursors, and introduced legislation aimed at slighting the CCP economically as well as diplomatically. Despite these stances, a firm with strong links to China, such as iGas, nonetheless donated to Donalds’s bid to succeed Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
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Polling has consistently shown Donalds — who snagged an endorsement from President Donald Trump in February 2025 — holding a massive lead over his primary election opponents. A November 2025 poll, for instance, had Donalds polling at 45% with his closest challenger, former Florida House speaker Paul Renner, trailing at just 3%. That status quo could soon be shaken, however, as Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R) announced that he would be joining the gubernatorial race on Monday.
The Donalds campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
