President Donald Trump has defended Chinese nationals purchasing U.S. farmland, while conceding he does not “love it,” in comments that underscore a central tension in his China policy: balancing national or food security concerns with economic realities.
These concerns over Chinese land purchases in the U.S. have increased in recent years, especially when they occurred near military bases, and the Trump administration has sought to restrict these acquisitions.
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity from Beijing during his visit to China, Trump framed Chinese land ownership as a market issue rather than an ideological one.
“Look, it’s not that I love it—you want to see farm prices drop, you want to see farmers lose a lot of money? Just take that out of the market,” said Trump.
He added that Chinese investors had acquired U.S. farmland for years without intervention from previous administrations. “But they’ve had a lot of land for a long time. [Barack] Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during the Obama administration. He did nothing about it.”
Once at the White House, Trump signed a national security
memorandum in February 2025 targeting Chinese and other foreign adversary investments in certain U.S. sectors, including agriculture.
In July 2025, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a "National Farm Security Action Plan" aimed at restricting land purchases by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries, working with Congress and other states to pursue legislative and regulatory limits.
"American agriculture is not just about feeding our families, but about protecting our nation and standing up to foreign adversaries who are buying our farmland, stealing our research, and creating dangerous vulnerabilities in the very systems that sustain us," Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said at the time.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA)
data (through December 31, 2023), Chinese entities reported owning about 277,336 acres of U.S. agricultural land—representing a small share—less than 1 percent—of overall foreign-held farmland in the U.S.
Ahead of Trump's visit to China, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced new legislation to close what they referred to as "dangerous loopholes" allowing countries like China to purchase farmland near U.S. military bases.
The
bill, proposed by Republican Representative John Moolenaar from Michigan, would expand the authority of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review and potentially block land deals involving countries such as China and Russia, particularly those near sensitive military and infrastructure sites.
A temporary block! Winning!
