WASHINGTON, D.C. – China’s farmland buys in the U.S. are attracting new attention on Capitol Hill.
The House Select Committee on US-CCP Competition, chaired by Michigan Republican John Moolenaar has its eye on a Chinese EV battery firm’s land buy in that state. He says, “Gotion is a Chinese-based company that it is buying farmland. It is a hundred miles from a National Guard location where a lot of training is done.”
And despite Michigan’s subsidizing a Gotion battery plant on that farmland over local opposition; “Fortunately, there is a process, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. has jurisdiction over this project. And I hope that they will come back with a report that says, this is not the place for a Chinese-based plant.”
⌊ Ag Secretary Vilsack Suggests Easing Up On Anti-China Rhetoric ⌋
The Treasury-led ‘CFIUS’ looks at national security issues raised by foreign investment and now includes USDA’s Secretary Vilsack as a member. Moolenaar, interviewed on News Nation, says China’s presence here, especially near sensitive U.S. military facilities, is no small matter.
Moolenaar says, “We’ve seen hundreds of incidents of gate-crashing at military bases from foreign nationals, many of them Chinese.”
China’s U.S. land holdings are less than one percent of foreign-owned acres, but at 350-thousand acres in 2022, it is still a serious concern. USDA is trying to improve its data collection to study the impact of foreign land holdings on rural communities and the exact location of foreign-owned land
