Washington, May 8: A group of U.S. lawmakers has taken significant steps to impose strict restrictions on property purchases by China and other adversarial nations near American agricultural land and sensitive military infrastructure. This initiative comes amid growing concerns over national security and food security in Washington.
John Moolenaar, chair of the committee focused on China, introduced legislation aimed at safeguarding U.S. agricultural land and sensitive sites from foreign adversaries. Additionally, some lawmakers have announced plans to introduce laws banning Chinese vehicles from American roads.
Moolenaar stated, “Food security is national security, and we cannot allow adversarial nations like China to purchase U.S. agricultural land near our most sensitive military and critical infrastructure sites.” He emphasized that this legislation would address existing gaps and prevent adversaries from acquiring land. Furthermore, it aims to implement the Trump administration’s “America First Investment Policy” and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “Farm Security Action Plan.”
The proposed law would expand the authority of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review real estate deals linked to entities from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It would create a new category for high-risk real estate transactions, including agricultural land, ports, telecommunications infrastructure, and properties near military and intelligence facilities.
This bill also broadens the definition of sensitive sites to include military installations, NASA centers, airports, seaports, data centers, fiber optic nodes, cloud computing facilities, and critical communication infrastructure. Under this legislation, high-risk transactions would be considered an unresolved risk to national security until they pass a rigorous review process.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have expressed support for this bill, including Representatives Josh Gottheimer, Jimmy Panetta, and Mike Thompson. Members from both parties have consistently argued that investments linked to China in strategic sectors could expose vulnerabilities in U.S. critical infrastructure and supply chains.
In addition, Moolenaar and Congress member Debbie Dingell announced plans to introduce a separate law to ban Chinese vehicles from American roads. Lawmakers stated in a joint statement, “Every vehicle on American roads is a mobile data collection device that gathers real-time information about location, movement, people, and infrastructure, and we cannot allow Chinese vehicles or their parts to be part of this system.”
This proposal comes at a time when tensions between Washington and Beijing are already high due to trade, technology, national security, and Taiwan-related issues.
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