U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration is exploring ways for the federal government to stop China from purchasing American farmland.
The post Exclusive — Secretary Rollins: USDA Exploring ‘Federal Solution’ to Stopping China from Purchasing U.S. Farmland appeared first on Breitbart.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration is exploring ways for the federal government to stop China from purchasing American farmland.
Rollins, in her first non-trade publication exclusive print interview, said that “no doubt” people are concerned about this and rightly want American farmland to be owned by Americans, not foreigners, especially those loyal to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Rollins said that Trump deserves major credit for reorienting worldwide discussions and viewpoints about the threat of the CCP on the world stage, as he began exposing this in his first run for president back in 2016 and during his first administration and in the ensuing years since and now in the second administration has continued this focus.
“Let’s just take a step back and give a little bit more credit to President Trump,” Rollins said. “If we’re looking back in history nine or 10 years ago, when he first came down that escalator in New York City and started talking about China as a massive threat not just to our national security but to everything—to our food security, to everything—and I remember as I’m a longtime Reagan conservative, a leader on policy in Texas for all those years before I met President Trump, people weren’t really talking about China. Not many people, at least, in that way. President Trump brought an entirely new context to the conversation on what we need to do to put America First. In fact, China may not be the really good player that a lot of the free market believers had suggested they were, so to answer your question directly I think a wholesale across-the-board very deep look at where China’s influence is, especially in the last decade, which is very concerning, is extremely important.”
Rollins told Breitbart News that through her organization — which she led until her nomination as USDA Secretary — America First Policy Institute, she has supported state-level initiatives taken to block China from buying farmland. Several states, like South Dakota and Florida, have outright passed laws barring it. More than two-thirds of states have adopted or were as of mid-last year considering legislative or other measures to do so. Now, Rollins said that the Trump administration is looking at ways to tackle this issue head-on from the federal government.
“One of the very, very top of the list perhaps is the Chinese purchase of our farmland. A lot of that land is around some of our military outposts,” Rollins told Breitbart News. “So we’re in a really, really important conversation right now on how to push that back. With my experience in the states, I am a huge, huge believer in the laboratories of democracy—the 10th Amendment says our states are the guardians at the gate—and for the last several years my organization America First Policy Institute, we actually worked among multiple states to get states to act on this to pass state legislation but we also are looking at a federal solution too.”
More from Rollins’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.
