Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) is not mincing words about what China is doing on American soil. As a bipartisan group of lawmakers moved Thursday to introduce legislation closing federal loopholes that have allowed foreign adversaries to purchase land next to U.S. military installations, Harrigan made clear he sees the threat as deliberate, visible, and long overdue for a direct response.
“There is nothing subtle about what China is doing when it buys land next to American military installations or acquires control over American agriculture,” Harrigan wrote in announcing his co-sponsorship, “and there should be nothing subtle about our response.”
A Congressman With Military Skin in the Game
Harrigan’s alarm carries the weight of personal experience. A former U.S. Army Ranger who served multiple combat deployments, the North Carolina congressman has made national security a defining focus of his time in office. His district, NC-10, includes Fort Bragg — one of the largest military installations in the world and home to U.S. Army Special Operations Command. For Harrigan, the idea of a foreign adversary purchasing land near a base like that is not an abstraction.
His co-sponsorship of the Protecting U.S. Farmland and Sensitive Sites from Foreign Adversaries Act puts him alongside twelve other House members — both Republicans and Democrats — who argue that the federal government has for too long left the door open to precisely the kind of strategic land acquisition that U.S. intelligence officials have flagged as a growing national security concern.
277,000 Acres and Counting
The scale of the problem that Harrigan is responding to is documented in federal data. According to a December 2025 USDA press release advancing the department’s National Farm Security Action Plan, foreign adversary-linked entities currently control at least 277,000 acres of agricultural land in the United States. The department described each of those acres as representing a threat to U.S. food supply chains, a potential vector for agroterrorism, and a platform for surveillance and sabotage of military bases and critical infrastructure.
The trajectory of that number tells its own story. In 1980, Chinese buyers held approximately 2,000 acres of American farmland, according to USDA figures. The holdings now measured in the hundreds of thousands represent a more than hundredfold increase — a pace that Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has described as “creeping up on our country” in a way that demands federal action.
The Loophole That Let It Happen
The central problem the legislation addresses is jurisdictional. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — known as CFIUS — is the interagency body charged with reviewing foreign investment for national security risks. But existing law has left significant gaps in what CFIUS can actually review, and foreign adversaries have exploited those gaps.
The clearest example came in 2022, when a Chinese food manufacturer purchased farmland in Grand Forks, North Dakota, situated directly adjacent to Grand Forks Air Force Base and Cavalier Space Force Station. CFIUS reviewed the situation and concluded the transaction did not meet the legal definition of a “covered transaction” within its jurisdiction — meaning federal authorities had no mechanism to block or formally review a Chinese company’s purchase of land next to a U.S. Air Force base. The deal proceeded.
That episode became the defining illustration of the problem Harrigan and his co-sponsors are now trying to fix. The bill would make such purchases presumptively subject to mandatory CFIUS review and deem any foreign adversary acquisition of land near sensitive military or intelligence sites an unacceptable national security risk.
What the Bill Would Do
According to the House Select Committee on China press release, the legislation introduced by Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) would establish a new category of “elevated risk real estate transactions,” triggering mandatory federal review for any purchase involving farmland, ports, telecommunications infrastructure, or locations in proximity to military installations and intelligence facilities. It would also formally add the Secretary of Agriculture as a required voice in CFIUS evaluations of such transactions — addressing a long-standing complaint that agriculture had no seat at the national security table when farmland deals were reviewed.
The bill covers foreign adversaries broadly, naming China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as the countries whose entities would face the new restrictions. Purchases by those nations’ linked entities would be treated as presenting an unacceptable risk to national security, with only limited exceptions.
A Bipartisan Coalition Backing the Bill
The legislation’s thirteen co-sponsors span both parties — a notable show of cross-aisle agreement on an issue that has sometimes struggled to move through a divided Congress. Republican co-sponsors include Reps. Ashley Hinson (IA), Neal Dunn (FL), Gus Bilirakis (FL), Dusty Johnson (SD), Zach Nunn (IA), Nathaniel Moran (TX), Dan Newhouse (WA), Randy Feenstra (IA), and Harrigan. Democratic co-sponsors include Reps. Julia Brownley (CA), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Jimmy Panetta (CA), and Mike Thompson (CA).
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), who co-sponsored the bill alongside Harrigan, put the case simply. “China shouldn’t be able to buy farmland or land near military bases,” Johnson wrote. “I’m leading legislation to stop these purchases and to give federal authorities more oversight into foreign land transactions.”
States Have Led. Now Congress Must Follow.
One argument running through the bill’s support is that states have moved far faster than the federal government. The Select Committee noted that approximately half of U.S. states have already enacted laws restricting or banning foreign adversaries from owning land within their borders. But a patchwork of state-level restrictions creates gaps that a determined adversary can navigate simply by targeting states that have not acted.
Adam Savit, Director for China Policy at the America First Policy Institute and a former senior adviser for national security at USDA, framed the federal gap bluntly. “The federal government needs the jurisdiction and the tools to stop these transactions before they happen, not to negotiate mitigation agreements after the fact,” Savit said. “States have led on this issue for years, and federal law should reinforce their efforts.”
For Harrigan, the argument comes back to the same point he made when he announced his co-sponsorship. China’s behavior is not hidden. It is not ambiguous. And in his view, the federal government’s response — until now — has been far too quiet. The bill text is available through the House Select Committee on China. No vote date has been announced.