WASHINGTON — Lawmakers in Congress and across the country are sounding national security alarms about foreign buyers, particularly those with links to the Chinese government, acquiring control of U.S. farm and forest land.
Members of both parties increasingly see Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party as threats to the U.S. The warnings offer farm-state lawmakers an opportunity to advance proposals they have pushed for several years that would treat foreign control of farm land and businesses as national security threats equivalent to those posed by foreign ownership of cutting-edge technology companies and intellectual property.
Despite the rhetoric on China, however, there’s also worry that federal scrutiny over transactions recorded at a local level and sometimes with only voluntary disclosure of the buyers’ homeland could meet resistance.
