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China! China! China!
I was prompted to look this up because a few folks in my area are running around screaming their heads off that China now owns more than 75% of the land in the U.S., which I found to be completely preposterous.
Also, Trumps Agenda47 is calling for...
2. Secure Strategic Independence from China
Republicans will revoke China’s Most Favored Nation status, phase out imports of essential goods, and stop China from
buying American Real Estate and Industries.
...which will of course, based on fear, cost the tax-payers who knows how much, while sidetracking us away from the real issues that we are legitimately facing.
Fear: We have much more to worry about than China buying the ENTIRE United States from us.
By Laura Strickler and Nicole Moeder
Aug. 25, 2023
State and federal lawmakers are pushing to regulate foreign ownership of U.S. real estate because of fears that Chinese entities are creating a national security risk by amassing swaths of U.S. farmland, some of it near sensitive sites.
A review by NBC News of thousands of documents filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, shows very few purchases by Chinese buyers in the past year and a half — fewer than 1,400 acres in a country with 1.3 billion acres of agricultural land. In fact, the total amount of U.S. agricultural land owned by Chinese interests is less than three-hundredths of 1%.
But the review also reveals a federal oversight system in which reporting of foreign ownership is lax and enforcement minimal.
Any foreign individual or entity that buys or leases U.S. agricultural land is required by federal law to report the transaction to the USDA within 90 days, yet some were not reported for years — in one case, more than 20 years. And in that same time period, no one has been fined more than $121,000 for failure to make such a report.
NBC News was able to review filings on foreign purchases and leases of agricultural land, meaning both farm and forestry land, from 35 states since Jan. 1, 2022. The vast majority of the transactions were European wind power companies leasing land from U.S. farmers to build wind turbines. One Italian wind company disclosed 40 new leases of farmland in just one rural Illinois county. The same company had leases in at least four other states.
In those 35 states, NBC News found 11 purchases by Chinese entities that had been reported to the USDA from Jan. 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023.
Several of the disclosures were not recent sales, and at least one was a repeat of a previous disclosure. Another was not reported to the government till it had been revealed in the media.
Smithfield Foods reported that it bought 186 acres in 2022 and 2023 in Missouri and North Carolina, adding to its existing U.S. portfolio of less than 128,000 acres, according to a company spokesman. Formerly a U.S. owned company, Smithfield Foods was bought by a Chinese firm in 2013.
“There are important issues to be addressed between the U.S. and China,” said Jim Monroe, Smithfield’s vice president of corporate affairs. “Ownership of U.S. agricultural land is not one of them.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/how-much-us-farmland-china-own-rcna99274
I was prompted to look this up because a few folks in my area are running around screaming their heads off that China now owns more than 75% of the land in the U.S., which I found to be completely preposterous.
Also, Trumps Agenda47 is calling for...
2. Secure Strategic Independence from China
Republicans will revoke China’s Most Favored Nation status, phase out imports of essential goods, and stop China from
buying American Real Estate and Industries.
...which will of course, based on fear, cost the tax-payers who knows how much, while sidetracking us away from the real issues that we are legitimately facing.
Fear: We have much more to worry about than China buying the ENTIRE United States from us.
By Laura Strickler and Nicole Moeder
Aug. 25, 2023
State and federal lawmakers are pushing to regulate foreign ownership of U.S. real estate because of fears that Chinese entities are creating a national security risk by amassing swaths of U.S. farmland, some of it near sensitive sites.
A review by NBC News of thousands of documents filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, shows very few purchases by Chinese buyers in the past year and a half — fewer than 1,400 acres in a country with 1.3 billion acres of agricultural land. In fact, the total amount of U.S. agricultural land owned by Chinese interests is less than three-hundredths of 1%.
But the review also reveals a federal oversight system in which reporting of foreign ownership is lax and enforcement minimal.
Any foreign individual or entity that buys or leases U.S. agricultural land is required by federal law to report the transaction to the USDA within 90 days, yet some were not reported for years — in one case, more than 20 years. And in that same time period, no one has been fined more than $121,000 for failure to make such a report.
NBC News was able to review filings on foreign purchases and leases of agricultural land, meaning both farm and forestry land, from 35 states since Jan. 1, 2022. The vast majority of the transactions were European wind power companies leasing land from U.S. farmers to build wind turbines. One Italian wind company disclosed 40 new leases of farmland in just one rural Illinois county. The same company had leases in at least four other states.
In those 35 states, NBC News found 11 purchases by Chinese entities that had been reported to the USDA from Jan. 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023.
Several of the disclosures were not recent sales, and at least one was a repeat of a previous disclosure. Another was not reported to the government till it had been revealed in the media.
Smithfield Foods reported that it bought 186 acres in 2022 and 2023 in Missouri and North Carolina, adding to its existing U.S. portfolio of less than 128,000 acres, according to a company spokesman. Formerly a U.S. owned company, Smithfield Foods was bought by a Chinese firm in 2013.
“There are important issues to be addressed between the U.S. and China,” said Jim Monroe, Smithfield’s vice president of corporate affairs. “Ownership of U.S. agricultural land is not one of them.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/how-much-us-farmland-china-own-rcna99274
