Foreign Adversaries’ Creeping Acquisition of U.S. Farmland Places Trump at Odds With His Own Party
Some GOP congressmen are at odds with President Donald Trump over an important national security issue: restricting Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland. In May, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), introduced bipartisan legislation titled “Protecting U.S. Farmland and Sensitive Sites from Foreign Adversaries Act.”
The bill would block property acquisitions by China and others such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and would extend beyond U.S. farmland to include seaports, telecom infrastructure, and property near military installations.
Trump has pushed back against restrictions, arguing they could depress land values and harm farmers. Nevertheless, his own agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has publicly highlighted the dangers of “the consolidation of our farmland” and adversarial foreign ownership “creeping up on our country.” Ironically, her warnings align with the Trump administration’s broader National Farm Security Action Plan, which treats food security as national security.
Outsized Risk
The numbers might seem small at first glance: Chinese-linked entities control roughly 250,000 to 300,000 acres out of America’s nearly 900 million acres of farmland. Foreign ownership overall accounts for only about three percent of U.S. agricultural land, with China representing a fraction of that. Yet Chinese-held acreage has surged more than 400 percent since 2010, and raw totals understate the threat. Strategic location matters far more than sheer quantity. Parcels near military bases or critical infrastructure pose outsized risks to America’s defense and supply chains.