Lawmakers Push Bill to Block China from Buying U.S. Farmland Near Military Sites as Trump Meets Xi

President Trump's meeting this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping coincides with calls from Congress members for tougher restrictions on China's purchases of U.S. farmland over national security worries.

Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for a summit with Xi that will cover trade, energy, Taiwan and the war with Iran. Before the trip, a bipartisan group of lawmakers put forward a bill to plug what they called dangerous loopholes that let foreign adversaries like China buy American farmland and real estate near U.S. military bases.

Food security is national security, and we cannot allow foreign adversaries like China to buy up American farmland near our most sensitive military and critical infrastructure sites, said Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the Select Committee on China and led the bill's introduction.

The measure drew support from both parties. Democrats signing on included New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer and California Reps. Julia Brownley, Jimmy Panetta and Mike Thompson.

A Trump administration official told CBS News that the government keeps tracking foreign land ownership as a priority, including state data collection methods.

Foreign entities own more than 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, or about 2 percent of the total, per the Department of Agriculture's latest report as of December 2024. Chinese holdings make up less than 1 percent of that foreign-owned land.

Trump signed a national security memorandum last February to limit Chinese investments in key U.S. sectors like technology, healthcare and agriculture. White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told CBS News that Trump is committed to making the United States a top spot for investment while protecting national security to keep America's future in American hands.

President Trump's upcoming meeting with President Xi will advance these goals with a clear-eyed view of the economic and security realities of today, she added.

The USDA has reported the states with the biggest Chinese land holdings as Texas with 123,708 acres, North Carolina with 44,263 acres, Missouri with 42,905 acres, Florida with 12,555 acres and Virginia with 4,654 acres.

Virginia-based Smithfield Foods Inc., a major global pork producer, was acquired in 2013 by a Chinese meat company for billions of dollars. Smithfield now ranks as the second-largest Chinese owner of U.S. agricultural land, with tens of thousands of acres, according to the USDA.

Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, told CBS News that worries about Chinese farmland investments are overblown. If you look at the latest data from the USDA, Chinese ownership of farmland is a tiny, tiny sliver of all U.S. farmland, he said.

He agreed there is a justifiable security argument for land near military bases but said more evidence is needed before restricting property rights. We always, always have to remember that in the vast majority of these farmland transactions, the seller is an American, he said. So this is the federal government restricting the property rights of American citizens.

CBS News has reported that China-linked buys near military bases have raised alarms. In 2023, North Dakota lawmakers stopped a Chinese company from building a corn mill near Grand Forks Air Force Base.

Moolenaar's bill would force the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to review land deals involving China, Russia or other adversaries. In 2022, the committee said it lacked authority over a Chinese purchase of farmland in North Dakota near Cavalier Space Force Station and Grand Forks Air Force Base.

Huge data reporting gaps have made it hard to track foreign investments fully, said David Feith, a former State Department national security official who handled U.S.-China policy in Trump's first term. He called the data very incomplete.

In January 2024, the Government Accountability Office, an independent agency, said the USDA needs to collect, track and share data better because it relies on paper forms from county offices. Without improving its internal processes, USDA cannot report reliable information to Congress or the public about where and how much U.S. agricultural land is held by foreign persons, the report stated.

A USDA official told CBS News the agency has improved mandatory reporting of foreign deals through an online portal and public submission form. Data for 2025 should be available in late 2026, the official said.

Dozens of states have laws that restrict foreign ownership of private agricultural land to some degree, per the National Agricultural Law Center. Recent efforts include Utah, where Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill expanding limits on foreign buyers.

The Utah law halted a land sale near Provo Airport to Cirrus Aircraft, majority-owned by the Chinese state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China. The Agriculture Department and American Farm Bureau said Chinese investors and firms own about 34,000 acres in Utah.

Total farmland owned by Chinese Communist Party entities may be small in aggregate, but that isn't what matters, said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Hudson Institute who focuses on U.S.-China ties. Lawmakers worry about proximity to sensitive locations. That's why we need to take this issue seriously, and it's good that Moolenaar is doing that, he said.