Last month U.S Rep. Dan Newhouse responded to reports of the Chinese communist government aggressively buying up American farmland with a bill to prohibit such transactions.
As Politico reported, the Washington state Republican expressed concern about a trend of deals “leading us toward the creation of a Chinese-owned agricultural land monopoly.” Newhouse’s measure “would block any new agricultural purchases by companies that are wholly or partly controlled by the Chinese government and bar Chinese-owned farms from tapping federal support programs.”
That naturally ran headlong into the Democrats’ woke priorities. Democratic Rep. Grace Meng of New York, who is of Asian descent, wanted the proposal to apply to all foreigners, or else it “would perpetuate already rising anti-Asian hate.”
The problem for Meng is that China is the only buyer that is both communist and hostile to America’s interests. According to Politico, most of the U.S. farmland owned by foreigners is held by Canada or Europeans.
Fortunately, Republicans seem undeterred in trying to block America’s enemies from buying up our rural areas, and Rep. Greg Steube is among them.
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On Sunday, the Sarasota Republican announced that he had filed the “Protecting Our Land Act.”
Steube’s bill would prohibit any “foreign adversary,” designated state sponsor of terrorism, or anyone acting as an agent of either one to purchase any public or private real estate located in the United States.
In a press release, Steube noted that the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act already requires foreign entities to report their acquisitions of U.S. agricultural land. But the data is incomplete and inaccurate, said Steube.
A USDA report from 2020 says foreigners owned nearly 38 million acres of U.S. farmland, which is double what foreigners held a decade earlier.
“Nefarious foreign acquisition of our U.S. land jeopardizes everything from our national security to our food security. My bill will curb malicious foreign activities on American soil and make America safer,” Steube said in an email to constituents on Sunday.
Steube’s bill should also satisfy woke liberals like Meng. In the press release, he identified Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea as nations besides China that America should block from owning more U.S. farmland.
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