SD Rep. Dusty Johnson supporting bill increasing oversight over foreign farmland purchases

South Dakota’s lone House Representative is continuing his fight against adversarial foreign governments buying United State’s agricultural land.

Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson is supporting a bill, introduced Wednesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, that would give the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. greater power to control land purchases by foreign governments deemed to be adversarial and to consider U.S. food security in its national security review.

In the bill, adversarial governments include China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela while President Nicholas Maduro continues to be in power.

The Secretary of Agriculture would also be able to vote in CFIUS reviews involving farmland and agriculture technology, according to the bill.

The bill is the latest step addressing the threat Congress believes the Chinese Communist Party poses to the U.S. Johnson, who sits on the Select Committee, said the work of the bipartisan committee is supported by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY.

More: Chinese companies in the crosshairs as South Dakota officials call for supply chain reforms

“They told us the threat from the Chinese Communist Party is too real for us to play partisan games with,” Johnson said.

He added he believes the work of the committee is gaining momentum and the new bill could make it out of the House.

“This bill makes so much sense and it’s going to be broadly supported,” he said. “It doesn’t have to catch a ride on a bigger bill, it can stand on its own merits.”

What else has been done to target adversarial foreign government purchases of U.S. land?

A bill known as the PASS Act, Promoting Agricultural Safeguards and Security Act, was introduced in February by Sen. Mike Rounds, R-SD, that seeks to ban adversarial foreign governments from investing in U.S. agricultural land and reporting the risk of foreign takeovers and investment in the U.S. agricultural industry. A similar bill had been introduced by Johnson last year but did not make it out of the House.

The 2022 PASS Act proposal came on the heels of a Chinese company, Fufeng Group, purchasing land near the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. That event also inspired Gov. Kristi Noem to push for legislation in the 2023 Legislative Session that would’ve created an independent state-run board similar to CFIUS. That legislation ultimately failed.

More: Sen. Mike Rounds introduces Senate version of PASS Act

But, a new South Dakota law that went into effect on July 1 bans the state from doing business with “prohibited entities” from China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia or Venezuela.

What else does the proposed federal legislation do?

In a press release from Johnson’s office, five additional actions from the legislation were outlined.

Those actions included giving CFIUS jurisdiction over all rural and non-single “housing unit” land purchases by foreign governments, requesting CFIUS consider U.S. food security in national security reviews, establish a “presumption of non-resolvability” and raise the approval threshold for transactions near sensitive sites, mandatory CFIUS filing for foreign adversarial entities making land purchases near sensitive sites and requiring the organization to expand the list of sensitive national security sites to military facilities, national laboratories and more.

More: Noem inks bill banning certain foreign government from doing business with SD

Johnson explained that currently if a foreign government wants to do business with CFIUS, the deal has to meet CFIUS’s standards and if the deal doesn’t, then CFIUS can make recommendations to the foreign government so they can meet the standard. The new bill would make that harder.

“We want to do here is instead say, ‘no, change your default’ — start with a presumption that you can’t make little changes to resolve these conflicts,” Johnson said. “In essence, the burden of proof is on the other side and we better be sure that we have proved that American interests are not injured by approving Chinese investments.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: SD Rep. Dusty Johnson pushes for control of foreign farmland purchases