Sen. Rounds, Gov. Noem don’t see eye-to-eye on foreign-owned ag land legislation

Rift between South Dakota Republicans pushing to ban Chinese from buying U.S. soil

Two of South Dakota’s top elected officials are at odds over how best to prevent American adversaries from owning U.S. agricultural land.

Both Gov. Kristi Noem and South Dakota U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds have been vocal about stopping foreign adversaries — chief among them China — from buying up American soil. But there’s a rift between the two over competing federal legislation awaiting action in the U.S. that takes different approaches to keeping U.S. land out of the hands of foreigners who mean the country harm.

Noem this week voiced support for a measure filed on Capitol Hill that would broaden the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ (CFIUS) ability to block land purchases tied to foreigners from six countries dubbed adversarial to the U.S., including China, Iran, and North Korea. And with the letter sent to the chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party came an indication of her opposition to a similar Senate measure that Rounds himself crafted.

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