This article is taken from NGFA's July 14 newsletter.
Members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party introduced a bill on July 12 to limit land purchases by foreign adversaries and broaden the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-WI, and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-CA, introduced the Protecting U.S. Farmland and Sensitive Sites From Foreign Adversaries Act, which would apply to the governments of the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Russian Federation. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela also would be covered, but only under Nicholás Maduro’s presidency.
The legislation would:
• Give CFIUS jurisdiction over all non-urban, non-single “housing unit” land purchases by foreign adversary entities.
• Mandate CFIUS to consider U.S. food security, including via biotechnology acquisition, as a factor in its national security reviews and require the Secretary of Agriculture to have a vote in CFIUS reviews of transactions that involve farmland or agriculture technology.
• Establish a “presumption of non-resolvability” by CFIUS and raise the approval threshold for CFIUS transactions by a foreign adversary entity purchasing near sensitive sites like major military sites, acknowledged intelligence facilities, etc.
• Mandatory CFIUS filing for foreign adversary entities making land purchases near sensitive sites.
• Require CFIUS to expand the list of sensitive national security sites to all military facilities, acknowledged intelligence sites, national laboratories, and defense-funded university-affiliated research centers; critical telecommunication nodes; etc.
Additional sponsors of the bill include:
Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force declared a Chinese company’s proposed North Dakota corn mill a national security risk. The Chinese-owned Fufeng Group purchased 300 acres of land 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base. The Grand Forks City Council unanimously voted to cancel the corn mill plant project in February.
The Biden administration on May 5 published a proposal to expand the jurisdiction of the CFIUS to include foreign acquisitions of real estate within 100 miles of U.S. military bases. Meanwhile, 130 lawmakers sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office last October asking for a “review of foreign investment in U.S. farmland and its impact on national security, trade, and food security as well as U.S. government efforts to monitor these acquisitions.”