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.
A prime example remains the 2022 attempt by a Chinese company to build a corn-milling plant near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota — a wake-up call for lawmakers concerned about espionage and supply-chain vulnerabilities.
States Taking Action
With Congress stalled between the president’s economic concerns and a bipartisan, security-focused bloc, states are stepping up. Roughly half have enacted restrictions on foreign ownership of agricultural land. In 2026 so far, more than two dozen states have considered new measures. Utah provides a clear success story: Republican Governor Spencer Cox signed legislation strengthening bans on adversarial purchases, blocking a deal near Provo Airport involving Cirrus Aircraft, a company majority-owned by a Chinese state-run defense contractor tied to the People’s Liberation Army.
Critics of the state-by-state approach warn of a regulatory patchwork, and some invoke outdated “alien land laws” of the early 20th century. Supporters rightly counter that today’s laws target CCP-linked entities and other foreign adversaries, not law-abiding individuals based on ethnicity.
Undermining Sovereignty
U.S. farmland is the backbone of America’s food security and economic independence. Allowing adversaries, especially the CCP (which has openly pursued strategies to destabilize the United States), to gain footholds on U.S. soil undermines sovereignty and grants a hostile foreign power future leverage over the American people. American land should serve American interests. Anything less risks trading away the very foundation of our independence.
This article is part of The New American’s weekly online newsletter Insider Report, which is emailed to TNA subscribers each week. Click here to subscribe to The New American to receive the Insider Report and access exclusive content.
