Agricultural Policy

Catherine Bertini, emeritus professor of practice at Syracuse University, discusses how the United States’ trade war is affecting farmers and food supply across the country. The host of the webinar is Carla Anne Robbins, senior fellow at CFR and former deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times.  TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Local Journalists Webinar. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. CFR is an independent, nonpartisan national membership organization, think tank, educator, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. CFR generates policy-relevant ideas and analysis, convenes experts and policymakers, and is the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. This webinar is part of CFR’s Local Journalists Initiative, created to help you draw connections between the local issues you cover and the national and international dynamics. Our programming puts you in touch with CFR resources and expertise on international issues and provides a forum for sharing best practices. We are delighted to have seventy journalists from thirty states and U.S. territories with us today. As was noted, this webinar is on the record. The video and transcript will be posted on our website after the fact at CFR.org/localjournalists. We are pleased to have Carla Anne Robbins and Catherine Bertini to talk about “Reporting on U.S. Agriculture Policy.” We’ve shared their bios, so I will just give you a few highlights. Catherine Bertini is a professor emeritus of practice at Syracuse University, a recognized leader in international organization reform, humanitarian program management, and an expert in hunger, nutrition, and gender issues. She is a distinguished fellow of global food and agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where she continues to work on policy recommendations for improving the lives of rural girls. She also advises the Rockefeller Foundation on global food security issues and Gates Foundation. Additionally, Ms. Bertini was the first American to be appointed executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme and received the 2003 World Food Prize laureate for her transformative work. Carla Anne Robbins is the host of this webinar series. She is a senior fellow at CFR. She also serves as faculty director of the Master of International Affairs Program and clinical professor of national security studies at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Previously, she was deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times and chief diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal. So thank you both for being with us for this conversation on “Reporting on U.S. Agriculture Policy.” Carla, I’m going to turn it over to you to have the conversation for the first twenty-five minutes or so, and then we’re going to open up to all of you for your questions, which you can either write in your chat or raise your hand. We prefer to have you raise your hand. And state your name and affiliation when we call on you. So, with that, Carla, over to you. ROBBINS: Thank you so much, Irina. And Catherine, if I may, thank you so much for joining us. So we have such impeccable news judgment here at the Council. President Trump announced yesterday a $12 billion bailout for U.S. farmers—those who produce corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, wheat, and other row crops. How bad are things for U.S. farmers? BERTINI: Oh, not good at all, and they’ve been through this before, and the president bailed them out in the first term. And so he’s doing this again. The money—first of all, people are asking, where in the world is this money coming from? There is a—there’s a system at USDA, it’s called CCC—Commodity Credit Corporation—and Congress funds it. So this is not just some money pulled out—the administration pulled out of a hat; actually, the Congress in the Big Beautiful Bill replenished the funding in the CCC. And it is used by the secretary of agriculture to help out in emergencies for farmers, so this is deemed an emergency. That’s where the money’s coming from. But, yes, because farmers across the board are having a very tough time. ROBBINS: So I saw a number from a senior research economist at North Dakota State that estimated that crop producers are going to lose between 35 billion (dollars) and 43 billion (dollars) on what they just harvested this fall. Does that number sound in the ballpark? I mean, and particularly when you compare it to $12 billion, the number seems pretty big. BERTINI: Yes, 12 billion (dollars) is not going to fix the—fix the problem. And by the way, there’s hoops that people have to run through in order to get it—get it, and right before Christmas the administration will tell them kind of what they need to do even for that. But, yes, that’s a plausible number that you suggest or that the North Dakotan suggested. But think about this from a farming perspective. If farmers planted their crops with their own—their own judgments of what kind of markets they had and what kind of opportunity they had, what the weather’s going to be like, and then all of a sudden, boom, markets got pulled out from under them, so what do they do? They have a lot of extra resources. Now, in the past sometimes those resources were selling abroad. In fact, the World Food Programme was created by wealthy countries who had farmer surplus. That was the whole rationale in 1961. And there was a lot of surplus that went overseas, and after a while a lot of the European countries stopped sending surplus but the U.S. did. So it could be an avenue, but the U.S. administration isn’t doing much overseas. They are sending some and some cash, but that could be an avenue for at least some. But it’s obviously not one that is explored and not fast enough for those crops not to spoil. ROBBINS: So let’s, if we can, try to break down what the problem is. I mean, if they’re going to lose between 35 billion (dollars) and $43 billion, that’s a problem that is tariffs, or no demand for foreign aid, or? Is it mainly tariffs? Is it because of the China market. I know that because of the trade war the Chinese found cheaper soybeans in Brazil and in Argentina. Is that basically what the problem is for their exports? BERTINI: Yeah. The export— ROBBINS: This is all about exports? BERTINI: It’s mostly about exports and tariffs; it’s not all about exports and tariffs. But let’s talk about them first. And soybeans are the—you know, the poster child here because they’re the ones that have most—been most dramatically impacted. China used to buy—well, does buy about 60 percent of the world’s soybeans, and so the U.S. was selling about 60 percent of its soybean(s) to China. And when the last time—in the last Trump administration, when this—there were different ag policies, of course, yes, it—China went to Brazil, which has pretty active soybean market. By the way, the U.S. once upon a time helped them get off the ground. And so they replaced the American market. And it’s not all going to come back. It’s just—it just won’t. It hasn’t. And the U.S.—like, for instance, 2018-2019, $4.7 billion was being sold to China, soybeans, down from 12.8 (billion dollars) the year before. So it was a pretty significant cut. So the U.S. has been working—the soybean industry’s been working to get back part of that market. They have part of it. But now the Chinese are retaliating again against this, so making it more difficult even for the soybeans. So, yes, it’s going to be a big loss. It can’t necessarily be made up. The foreign aid was never as much as any of this, so that couldn’t totally make up for it. It just could be a help, for instance, to move some food. But as I said, not necessarily this market now just because of the time that it takes to get it moved. So as it—as it relates to soybeans, that’s an issue. But other—I mean, other farmers are hurting from issues like immigration and the people they use. If you’re—if our listeners talk to any dairy farm—any dairy farmer, I suggest, they go visit in their—in their community and talk to them about what their biggest issues are. Even if they’re not exporters—and they may not be—there are going to be labor issues and there are going to be issues because they can’t get enough workers. Now, I’ve talked to dairy farmers who say, you know, Americans—I try—I try to hire Americans first, and when the Americans come here they want to drive my trucks and my tractors. They want to work in my office. They don’t want to work up close with the—with the cows. It’s just not their thing. And I need people to hug the cows every day and be here every day. ROBBINS: (Laughs.) BERTINI: Yeah. I mean, really, you do, while you’re setting up the machines and everything. And he can only find Mexican and Guatemalan workers to do that. And are they legal? No, because the immigration policies that we have way before—it has nothing to do with this administration—can allow people to hire overseas workers for short-term assignments like when the vegetables are coming—are being ready to harvest. And you can hire somebody with a short-term visa to do that. But not year-round visas for these guys. ROBBINS: Yeah. I saw this estimate, some numbers that seemed pretty extraordinary, although actually not extraordinary at all knowing what Americans want to do and don’t want to do, that about two-thirds of agricultural workers and crop and crop-related work are non-citizen immigrants, and nearly half lack work authorization. BERTINI: Yeah. ROBBINS: And the share of undocumented workers is significantly higher in specialty crops such as vegetables, greenhouses, fruit and nut operations. So the administration was going after these people. They’ve somewhat backed off on it. But the message has gotten out and people are frightened. It’s not surprising they weren’t sending their kids to school. You know, it’s a pretty scary thing. So the administration came along and they have this proposed fix. They did a filing in October in the Federal Register. I want you to help me make sense of this. I haven’t been able. And I asked my husband because he briefly covered agriculture, and he doesn’t have an explanation for it. Their suggestion was that they want to make it easier and less expensive for farmers to hire foreign laborers through this guest worker program by lowering wages and allowing them to charge laborers for their housing. I’m not exactly sure how that attracts more workers. BERTINI: No, I imagine it doesn’t. And why should they have to—why can’t they do what they want to do with their housing? I mean, a lot of these farmers, you know, bought up other farms, right? We have very—so many less, really, small, small family dairy farms anymore. So there’s a lot of big ones that have bought other farms, so they have lots of little farmhouses. That’s where they put these people. Isn’t that a good thing that they’ve—that they’ve found a way to house their workers? And, yeah, some of the workers bring families, and what’s wrong with that? But paying them less and—(laughs)—charging them more for housing is just not—it doesn’t even make any sense. ROBBINS: Yeah. Just so—I’m thinking about people doing stories in their communities. There is this—I don’t—I don’t know enough about this, but it’s—I wonder whether this was a holdover lobbying campaign to change the guest worker program and the demands—the regulatory demands on farmers. I mean, I don’t understand this. I spent some time reading about it yesterday trying to understand why they think this is going to fix the labor problem. So if anybody out there, you know, who’s covering this can explain it to us, Catherine doesn’t understand it, I don’t understand it. BERTINI: No. ROBBINS: It’s an immigration puzzle. I do know that the United Farm Workers is suing over this policy, but it to me is a—it is a really fascinating thing. So if we can go back a little bit more to the plight of farmers before I throw this open for questions, the tariffs, I gather, are also hurting farmers because they also have to worry about imports. They were in sort of an import problem even before the Trump tariffs because of the war in Ukraine, because it drove the price of fertilizer up because the Russians were big exporters of fertilizer, so things were expensive. They were also suffering from high interest rates. Can we talk a little bit about borrowing and how that fits into the life of a farmer? BERTINI: Sure. Well, obviously, borrowing fits into any of our lives, right, for our mortgages or for buying a new car or anything else. So if you imagine that your livelihood depends on the rates that you get, or even the possibility that you have to have mortgages—there are some communities that may not be familiar with farmers, and farmers’ tactics, and farmers’ needs, and so forth. It’s hard to find a bank sometimes that will want to lend to agriculture interests. So it’s sometimes that, you know, you have to do a different kind of bank shopping even to find—to do it. But the insecurity of the possibility of funding and the cost of the funding is also, obviously, extremely significant. But the—to your point about imports, imports are really important to us, especially for fruits and vegetables. They’re a substantial part of any market that we go to and any kind of food that we buy. And so the imports and what’s being limited because of the tariffs is a real serious problem for everybody, not just for farmers. ROBBINS: Well, that’s certainly driving up—driving up food prices for all of us. But I think what I was talking about specifically for farmers is that—is that their suffering because—as part of this problem is that—is that they have to pay higher levies, you know, on the metal, like, for the cost of tractors or for farm buildings. And so they’re getting sort of buffeted not just on exports, but also on imports for their goods. BERTINI: Sure. Well, I understand that both Caterpillar and John Deere, the two big American makers of farm equipment, have complained to the administration or raised to the administration their concerns because these tariffs and export policies and so forth are impacting them also, and they’re also asking for some financial relief from this as well. ROBBINS: So, so far there’s no bailout for—in that way. But the—so this $12 billion bailout, so far as we can tell, is not even going to begin to cover the amount of it. And you said before Christmas they’re going to get the word about how they can apply for it. Can you talk a little bit about that process? BERTINI: Yeah. Mmm hmm. Yeah. First of all, this—in the—in the One Big Beautiful Bill there was $65.6 billion for ten years of agriculture support—ten years. So, you know, we’re already spending now 12 (billion dollars) out of that for this. So the farmers—now, I read this in Jerry Hagstrom’s report, and I would tell people if they really wanted to more—know more detail there’s a journalist in Washington that writes a thing called the Hagstrom Report. And so he wrote that the week of December 22 is when the administration’s going to give more details about how farmers apply or how they’re supposed to go about accessing this money, and then the money will be available by the end of February 2026. So that’s still quite a delay for guys that and women that owe money for various reasons and didn’t get to sell their crops, but that’s what’s happening. ROBBINS: So we have a question from Diego Lopez. Diego, do you want to ask your question or should I read it? (Pause.) I can—I can read it. I’m a good reader. And I— Q: Hey. I’m sorry. ROBBINS: Oh, great. Q: Thank you for unmuting me. Thank you for—(laughs)— ROBBINS: Can you identify yourself? Q: Yes. Diego Lopez with the Cibola Citizen here in New Mexico. Thank you very much for putting this on. I was wondering, our state works really diligently to buy local produce. We have a rule that requires suppliers to identify when it—when the product is “New Mexico True,” or made domestically. So how is the release of this funding going to impact our local farmers? Are we going to see a decrease in local produce? And is there a dashboard where we can track this funding? Thank you very, very much. BERTINI: Well, I hope—the government usually has ways to track the funding. I can’t tell you what that might be. But the—according to the Big Beautiful Bill, the kind of crops that will have first dibs on the—11 billion (dollars) of the 12 billion (dollars) are barley, chickpeas, corn, cotton, lentils, oats, peanuts, sorghum, soybeans, wheat—I can’t read sort of my own writing—rapeseed, sunflower. So I don’t think your vegetables will be on that list, and they’re not usually for better or for worse. However, the billion—that’s supposed to be up to 11 billion (dollars) of the 12 (billion dollars). A billion (dollars) of the 12 (billion dollars) is supposed to be for specialty crops, which is where vegetables—fruits and vegetables, tree nuts might come in, and sugar. ROBBINS: Diego, do you cover agriculture? Q: Yes. Thank you very much for the answer. I do. I mostly track the impacts of drought. And you know, we don’t have a ton of local producers here, but what we do have is I think countywide the U.S. Department of Agriculture tracks, I think, 1,300 cows across our county—cattle, I mean. So—but we do. We try as much as we can to cover agriculture in the community. It’s mostly drought, though. ROBBINS: Can you talk—are you seeing an impact of any of the problems that we’ve been talking about? Are farmers going out of business? Are farmers having problems with getting people to work on their farms? Is this—you know, are any of these problems particularly affecting them? Q: I can’t say we’ve heard any issues about labor. I can’t say we’ve heard any issues about labor or anything about immigration impacting the staffing with our local farms and ranches. The biggest concern is water access. ROBBINS: Which is—which is now, of course, going to become—this is an additional issue with tariffs on Mexico that the president has voiced. Catherine, can you talk a little bit about that? BERTINI: Well, just reading in the paper this morning that he put additional tariff on Mexico because of a disagreement over water usage. That’s been going on for some time, but just a way that you try to get some movement on that. Diego probably knows, you know, the ins and outs of this being right on the border much better than we do. But that’s—that was what the paper said today. ROBBINS: So in addition to questions, we would love to hear from any of you who are covering this issue in your communities about what your experiences are with farmers and either the challenges that they’re facing from tariffs or the challenges they’re facing from immigration issues, as well as any suggestions on sourcing for your colleagues about how they can—how they can track these issues in their own—their own communities. It seems to me like there’s some really great potential stories now that this money is going to go out, starting with this very issue that you were talking about from the Hagstrom Report, which is what are the challenges of applying for something like this. We all know how hard it is to deal with the bureaucracy. I was reading, I think, in the Times this morning, which quoted someone—Richard Fordyce, an undersecretary at the Agriculture Department—which said, and this is attributed to the New York Times, which—OK, full disclosure, I used to work for them—but said that the most an individual person or legal entity could receive was $155,000, and that only producers with an adjusted gross income less than $900,000 would be eligible, which are similar to limits that apply to many other farm programs. So, you know, that’s a—you know, it’s—adjusted gross income less than $900,00 seems to still be a pretty big income for a farmer, but there was a lot of criticism of the last Trump bailout that a lot of the money went to really big producers, not to smaller producers, the ones that are most sensitive to—you know, to the vicissitudes, the changes of policy itself; as well that it wasn’t adequately targeted to the farmers that produced the crops that were most hit by tariffs, that it seemed to be—as we saw, including in the Biden administration, with a variety of bills that were meant to provide support during COVID, that the people who knew how to work the system the best were the ones who got the most money, and that’s not necessarily your average small farmer. So, Catherine, if I were a local reporter and I wanted to track this, how would you suggest I go about it? I mean, there are some potentially really good stories there. BERTINI: Sure. Well, there’s a—there’s still, although they’ve been cut back, agriculture offices in different counties. I think some have lost them, but they’re still either handled in the county or handled regionally. And so they would be—they would be the local source of or could find out the answers to which farmers in the county are applying and/or have received grants. These are USDA offices, yeah. ROBBINS: So we have four questions. Great. And more to come, I’m sure. So we have one from Frank Morris, who’s a national correspondent for KCUR in Kansas City NPR. So, Frank, can you be unmuted and ask your question? Q: There we go. Yeah. Thanks. I just wanted to clear up the issue about how lowering pay and charging guest workers for housing was sort of, like, part of an effort to bring more people in. That’s because it—the thinking is that it isn’t the pay or the—that prevents them; it’s the quotas under the H-2A visa system. It’s that, you know, restriction about year-round workers. So the thinking is that if you just—and the pay, according to some farmers—and it varies from state to state—the pay rate is based on a—you know, what the minimum wage is in the state plus, because they want to make it unattractive for farmers to hire foreign workers and make it—thereby making it more attractive for them to hire people—you know, domestic workers who, as has been noted, tend to not want to work under cows. But the—so the issue is—the idea is that they’re going to make it easier and cheaper to bring in more people, and then there are people that will come in even at these different wages. But I was going to say the—I spoke with a farmer who said he’s paying the equivalent—this is a blueberry farmer in New Jersey—the equivalent of $31 an hour with the housing, also transportation requirements and the pay rate that’s set, again, to encourage farmers to hire locally. ROBBINS: And do you think this is going to work? Q: Well, I don’t know. I mean, it makes for interesting bedfellows when the farm unions are, you know, saying—suing, you know, and saying, well, you—they’re lowering these wage rates illegally, they can’t just do that, and pointing out that, you know, this isn’t an America first initiative if they’re trying to make it easier and cheaper to hire people from overseas. So—and there was a—you know, part of the administration, the secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, said earlier in the summer, look, we want a 100 percent American workforce in the farm sector, and we’ll just have, you know, able-bodied Medicaid recipients go out and, you know, work in the barn or what have you. So there’s—so you have a situation where you could have the farm labor unions in league in some way with the more anti-immigrant forces in the Trump administration. I think it’s going to be an interesting—but so I don’t know if it’s going to work. I know that people all over agriculture have been, you know, trying to get something and move the needle on a guest worker program for agriculture for a long time, and pretty much everybody agrees it doesn’t really work very effectively. So I think there is some—you know, some movement. And with the border—southern border being essentially shut down, you don’t—there’s sort of some wiggle room for immigration hardliners to kind of step forward and cooperate with changes a little bit. So it's very much in flux right now, I think. BERTINI: Yeah. I would recommend that reporters talk to the farmers about, for instance, the Medicaid thing. Well, do you think you could find American farmers—American workers if you—if we paid a little more and we—and we recruited from the ranks of the people that get Medicaid? See what the farmers think about that. Q: Oh, I think that’s a nonstarter. But—and I don’t think that that’s something that people in—who actually try to hire people for farm work would ever embrace. So, yeah, I—and that is no longer Secretary Rollins’ position. You know, she changed on that pretty dramatically around September and started saying, no, no, we need to make it easier and cheaper to import workers. BERTINI: Yeah— ROBBINS: Frank, before I let you go—just, I’m sorry, Catherine, I interrupted you. BERTINI: No, no. My point is any sort of an effort to change—and I agree, the system is crazy. It’s a nonfunctional system. But any sort of effort to change it in favor of American workers has to have as a given that there are available and competent American women—workers to do the jobs. ROBBINS: I just want to ask Frank one more question itself, which is: Are you seeing fewer immigration raids around agriculture workers? Q: No, not a lot. There was—there were a couple, one kind of alarming one where ICE agents came in and raided a meatpacking—a small meatpacking operation in Omaha. And that—I think they kind of touched a hot stove with that. And there was a lot of pushback. And because if you were to take all the immigrants out of the meatpacking industry, you shut it down. And that would be a calamity for producers who have—you know, because there’s a pipeline. It’s not like you just get to, you know, process these cattle at a time of your choosing. There’s a pipeline. And if you shut down the system, it’s like, you know, shutting—you know, clogging up an escalator. The escalator keeps running. And, you know, in this case cows will be piling up on top of each other, becoming less and less valuable all the time. So that raid, it seems to me, was kind of a—I don’t know, maybe a wake up. We haven’t really seen anything like that since. ROBBINS: Thank you. So Tony Pilkington had a question. And I’m sorry, Tony, can you identify yourself? Q: I’m Tony Pilkington with the Breckenridge Texan. And we’re located in a rural area in North Texas. And I wonder if you guys could touch a little bit on the ranching and beef industry, because that’s an area that we’re heavily involved in. And I’m kind of trying to figure out where to go in on some of these stories, and where it’s kind of—we’ve got everything from small producers to big, giant ranches. So I’m just curious if you guys have some insight on what to be looking for in this particular area as far as local stories go. BERTINI: Well, I’d say two. One is this—the issue of who’s working there, and under what authority. And the other are the export markets—because the bigger ones in particular, are going to be impacted by the export markets. And the differences between—for instance, you could look at the last few years. You could look at what their sales were in 2017 versus 2018, 2019, 2020, and then what it was like a few years after that. And now, you know, it may be too early to estimate for this year, but I’d look at the trends of export sales as another indicator, particularly for the bigger ones. Because beef cattle raising is really important. Beef exports, pork exports, although you may not have a lot of pig farms. But in any case, those are—those are big exports. Chicken. ROBBINS: Tony, anything else? So we’ll go on to Tammy Grubb, who’s from the Herald Sun? Q: Hi, yes. Tammy Grubb, Herald Sun and News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thank you for holding this. It’s really been very interesting. I had two questions, totally unrelated. One, I was wondering about the bailout and how much of that is related to helping farmers versus responding to the commodity trading markets, which I think have fallen this year. I’m not quite sure exactly where that stands now. The other is just wondering how the timeline for these grants could affect planning for the spring planting season, which starts here in about February and March. BERTINI: Yeah. It’s hard to get in the mind of the White House exactly why they’re doing these things, but since they did this also in the last administration, and since farmers are really hurting and the commodity groups organizations themselves, as opposed to commodity markets, the groups have really been raising a lot of attention to this through Republican members of Congress, as well as through the White House. So my guess is it’s more direct to farmers, but that’s just a guess on my part. I mean, more instigated at the White House by their concern about the farmers. Then I would say the timing, yes, the timing is critical, because what I just described before. If the payments don’t go out or start going out in February, until February, it’s going to be pretty difficult, in some cases, for farmers to decide what it is they’re going to plant. But on the other hand, the payments are just payments. Again, they’ve lost their markets, at least temporarily. So they’re going to have to—and no matter when those payments come in, and the payments probably needed for past due bills that they would have paid from the sales from their crop. So really, they have to make some sort of, in most cases, downsized decision about what it is they’re going to plant, and how much. And my guess is going to be based in part on what they were able to sell. Q: So I would say that this sounds like it could be a continuing cycle, maybe even worsen before it gets better? Would you say that’s a fair assessment? BERTINI: You’re talking to me? Q: Yes. Yes. BERTINI: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely a fair assessment. This is not going away anytime soon. I mean, the only couple of things that could change is if Congress says this is illegal, we can’t do—the president doesn’t have the authority to do tariffs. Who knows what that might be? The case—I understand that the paper The Hill reported that Costco and fifteen others have sued the government for unlawfully installing the tariffs. But that’s not going to be able—they can’t do anything with that until Congress does something about it, if they do. Q: Thank you. I appreciate that. ROBBINS: Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman, if you can identify yourself and ask your question. Q: Hi. Hello. Can you hear me? ROBBINS: Absolutely. Q: Yeah, hi. My name is Marieke. I’m a Canadian American currently studying at Concordia University in Montreal and working for Le Devoir here. Kind of a tangentially connected reporting stream, but I found myself somehow doing a few articles on the trucking industry. And one thing we’ve heard a lot from truckers in Canada is that they’re having a hard time making trips to the States because when they get there they have a hard time filling up their trucks to get back up to Canada. So I thought that was—like, it’s been really interesting to hear more about the agriculture industry and how that relates, because I’ve heard from them that they’ll go to the states and when they would wait usually a couple hours to fill up their trucks and go home, they now how to have to wait, like, a day or two to find enough things for it to be worth their while. So I thought that was super interesting. BERTINI: I heard a—I heard a speech recently by Justin Trudeau, the immediate past prime minister. And he said, you know, it’s—beyond whatever the governments do about trade policy and tariffs and all that, Canadians are voting with their feet and their pocketbooks, personally. So American bourbon sales in Canada are way down. So those trucks are not going to take any bourbon back. And then I believe, I don’t know if there’s any reporters on from Kentucky, but I I’ve heard that that several distilleries have had to close. Don’t know if that’s true. But much less bourbon. Much less wine from California or elsewhere. The housing, especially in Florida and Arizona, is changing hands. Anecdotally I heard of a women’s—a summer women’s club in Florida that lost ninety of its members because the Canadians weren’t coming down anymore. So, yeah, Canadians aren’t wanting to buy lots of different American goods. And so it makes sense those trucks are having a hard time getting full to go back. Q: Yeah. Anecdotally as well, I heard that this, the Sour Puss drink is opening a factory in Quebec so that they can start selling to Quebecers again, which I thought was very, very interesting. But I guess my question is a bit more, like, systemic, I suppose, about agriculture. I’m really interested in, like, food systems. And it’s part of what I study at university. And I’m curious what the missing link, I guess, is between farmers losing a ton of money and grocery prices going up like crazy, and kind of, like, if there would be a solution, a policy solution, that could realign those two things in some way. ROBBINS: Good question. BERTINI: Well, I can—yeah, I can see you’re going to have an exciting career, because you’re able to have a lot of these kind of questions. And you can solve some of them you’ll be—you’ll be a hero to many. I think the problem is that the things that—the prices are going up on things we can’t get as much in, like, for instance, the imports into the U.S. And not necessarily to what’s grown in the U.S., where the prices ought to be—ought to be considerably lower, or going in that direction, just because of the surplus we have because of surplus that can’t be sold. ROBBINS: Hmm, can I ask a—I want to follow on that. That’s a really intriguing question to me, which is—which is you were talking about a very small amount of surplus before going to foreign aid. And we all, like, remember those pictures of, like, the big cheese blocks that they stock—that they stockpile. (Laughs.) BERTINI: Yes, yes. ROBBINS: So, the president is talking about—he sort of swings back and forth between talking about affordability is a con job and then talking about how prices have gone down. But when—if you look about the approval rating for this—approval ratings for this administration, one of the concerns is that food prices actually haven’t gone down, or the food prices are too high. Is there any way—you know, and in the past have the federal government purchased food from farmers to in some way make up the difference here? Not just as for SNAP or something like that, but also in some way to lower prices on the market, or make a difference there for general consumers? Or does that just go back and end up hurting farmers? BERTINI: No, they do. They have done that in the past to help farmers. It just it takes a while to actually physically do it. But, yes, the cheese reference, which maybe some people online might only know from reading in the history books— ROBBINS: Yeah, because they’re much younger than we are. (Laughter.) BERTINI: Yeah. Yes. (Laughs.) But what happened was there was a glut on the dairy market, and the government bought up lots of cheese—lots of cheese. And when the Reagan administration was looking for ways to make cuts, they found, you know, miles of cheese in government warehouses. So they said, well, let’s give it away. So first they got criticized for giving away cheese, because people said—some people said it wasn’t good for you, why are you giving them cheese? But they gave it all over the place. And then there weren’t really so many food banks or systems that we have now for giveaways. So they were everywhere. There were churches and schools, you know, anybody could go get chunks of cheese. Well, I became assistant secretary of USDA under Bush forty-one. So I go in there and, you know, letters from the president that they don’t answer there, that they send down. I got mounds of letters to President Bush, where’s my cheese? There’s no cheese here anymore, because they had been successful getting rid of it. Anyway, as I said before, on an international scale WFP used to have— ROBBINS: World Food Programme. BERTINI: The World Food Programme, yes, thank you. Used to have lots of surplus food from the U.S. And then there was a shift, really we should provide—we, collectively in the world, should buy more cash so that farmers in developing countries could grow their own food and we could buy it from them. So it was a big shift in that direction. But the U.S. still gives some—there’s a program called McGovern-Dole, which is a school feeding program. And that still gives in-kind food. And that certainly could be expanded. For instance, something like that, or the Food for Peace Program, which I know some Republican members of Congress tried to move to USDA once USAID was being eliminated. I don’t know, frankly, where that ended. But anyway, there are vehicles, is the point I’m trying to say, that could be used. We now have a great food banking system in the U.S. that could distribute. And we have those. Now, also the one thing to know is that the government does buy, and I assume the administration still does buy—has the authority to buy certain crops that, for a year or two, grew much more than they expected and much more than their markets. So they do that with apples, prunes, I mean, a lot of different kind of perishable food items. And they send those around to, you know, food banks, senior centers, other places where take large amounts of food. So, anyway, yes. The vehicles exist, if somebody wanted to physically do that. ROBBINS: Where’s my cheese? (Laughs.) But, I mean, that’s interesting—because also the other thing that soybean farmers have been saying for a long time, and I have no idea whether this environmentally makes any more sense than ethanol, which makes utterly no sense environmentally. There’s been a big—since the first Trump administration and the drop off in Chinese purchases of soybean—a big push from soybean farmers to have more mandates for the development of soybean-based fuels and as well as congressional mandates for the use of soybean-based fuels, the way that the—finally, you know, the corn farmers got their way on ethanol. Do you know anything about that? BERTINI: Yes. That’s pre-tariff problems. I mean, they’ve been working on that for a while, yeah? ROBBINS: Right. BERTINI: So, that’s just a question, I think, of whether it’s politically palatable to do it. And it’s certainly not something that could be stood up very quick—fairly quickly in response to the current crisis for soybeans. ROBBINS: Although they’re pushing it very hard right now. BERTINI: Yeah, of course. Of course, yeah. ROBBINS: The soybean farmers, yeah. BERTINI: Well, look, this is their opportunity. Look at, you know, we’re bleeding, let’s—if nobody pays attention to them now they’re never going to pay attention later, when they’re more comfortable. ROBBINS: Right. Charlie Schlenker writes in—and, Charlie, do you want to speak your question, or should I read it? Well, I can read it. Oh, go ahead and read it. Thank you. Farm bankruptcies are up significantly, though still low in relative terms—800-plus last year. Are there projections for new—for the new year based on late winter aid payments or later? BERTINI: I don’t know. I can’t answer that. No. ROBBINS: And, Diego, you have another question? Do you want to speak it, or shall I read it? So Diego asked, on Venezuelan beef, is that meat already on the market? And how can Americans tell the difference between USA beef and outside? I don’t know anything about this. Are we buying Venezuelan beef now? BERTINI: Again, I’m going to have to say I don’t know. But I thought—I thought the beef had to be labeled, didn’t it, about where it’s from? I remember, there was a big push a long time ago for U.S. beef always to be—always to be labeled. ROBBINS: I remember those—now I’m, like, really dating myself—beef, it’s what’s for dinner. Yeah, those really, really great ads, but. BERTINI: Yeah. And so I don’t know the answer, but I think American beef has to be labeled. ROBBINS: So other questions out there from you guys? I would love to hear a little bit more from people who are covering this about what they’re—what they’re hearing in their community, as well as any suggestions on sourcing. Catherine, you’re also a professor. For people who are covering this, what’s the best way in your community to find information? I mean, there’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What sort of—where do you find information about this if you want to track this in your community from sort of a vertical integration, from Washington down through your state, through your local community? BERTINI: Yeah. I definitely go to the USDA office in my county or my region, or both. And also, every state, of course, has its own department of agriculture, and usually with regional offices. But whatever, they have some sort of outreach, every one of them. And so being connected to them. And they will, of course, have a specific background just about the state. Those would be the two data sources I would start with right away. I would go to the land-grant university in your state. And I know that the agriculture reporters know about this, but if somebody’s a community reporter and doesn’t you know, the land-grants were created by Abraham Lincoln in order to have some capacity in each state in—essentially, in agriculture. And they’ve expanded quite a lot into a lot of different areas in the state. So they have a wealth of information. There’d be grad students there that’d be more than willing to be your best friend and help you find a lot of detailed sources. So I’d go to—I’d go to the land-grant, I’d go to the dean of agriculture at the land-grant and tell them you’re interested in kind of a relationship with somebody who’s going to be there, who can—or, a set of students who can help you, even if they recycle out once in a while. Because they would give you—I mean, they would be real eager to help you. And the government bureaucrats, of course, would give you the basic information. But I think you’d get a lot of twists and turns and nuances from grad students or professors at your land-grant. ROBBINS: And who are the—I mean, who are sort of the strongest lobbying? I mean, there’s the American Farm Bureau Federation. BERTINI: Yeah. Yes. And each commodity group. You know, we’ve been talking about soybeans. And there’s corn, and wheat, and all—I mean, everybody’s got a commodity group. And in states where they grow a lot of that commodity, they also have a state group. For instance, there’s an Illinois Corn Growers, right? And so I would find out from them, you know, who’s their public affairs person or their research person, and spend a lot of time with them. Because they’re the ones that are—they will really know the gory details of their crop, and what the government is doing, or not doing, to help them. And their market share, and everything else, yeah. ROBBINS: I would also be talking to community bankers and local bankers, because they are so tightly involved. I mean, farmers live constantly on, you know, this banking margin, which is they constantly have to borrow, even the most successful farmers. That seems like a— BERTINI: Yes. Yes. And I’d say, every once in a while go to a farm. I mean, you know, you don’t have to—if it’s not your regular beat you don’t have to do it all the time, but visit a farmer once in a while. He’d be flattered—he/she would be flattered if you went to see them. And whatever aspect you want to take on it. You know, go at Thanksgiving and do something about how whatever they’re producing is going to end up on your Thanksgiving table. Or go, you know, talk to them about their workforce, or whatever. I mean, you could find some other hook, but I’d definitely visit farmers once in a while because, you know, it’s going to be totally different than data, and PR, and policy. It’s going to be the real thing. ROBBINS: Marilou Johanek has a question. And she’s a columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal. Q: Can you hear me now? ROBBINS: Absolutely. Q: Oh, great. Yes, I am with the Cap Journal in Columbus, Ohio. I just wanted to add one other source possibility for anyone listening. That the chapter—your chapter states chapter of the National Farmers Union, which really represents primarily family farmers, been really good source here in Ohio because I’ve been talking to a lot of those folks who are really struggling, as you say. And they look at corporate farmers and they say, these guys are doing fine. But we’re getting hit, like you were saying before about the imports and the exports, we’re getting hit on both sides. Plus we have a high interest rates. And I’ve talked to a guy who, interestingly, used to be a Republican county chairman in one of the counties here, and is a fourth- or fifth-generation farmer who got so ticked off by the last bailout in the first Trump administration that he actually got out—he led his GOP party in the county—changed, left that position. Has gone to the Democrats in the state trying to do a listening tour through the state, saying it’s—this is just the same old thing over again. And farmers don’t want continual handouts, you know? And it’s—he is going around talking to farmers in rural communities because it is—that’s where you get the bottom line. And these people in the farming community, he said, you know, they’re going to be bought up by other people, but they’re the ones going under. They’re the ones where, you know, you’re losing your farms. The suicide rate is already way up, you know? So family farms—again, it’s National Farmers Union chapter in your state. If you haven’t, those are good sources. ROBBINS: Did you write a column about this which we can share with everyone? Q: Yeah. ROBBINS: Great. Send it to us. That’d be great. Thank you, Marilou. Q: OK. BERTINI: That’s a great—that’s a great suggestion. And you remind me when you say that about something else, because I think it’s especially helpful for family farms. Somebody ought to look at, if they’re interested, in the school lunch rules. You know, school lunch is national, as you know, breakfast and lunch. But the rules, I think, are fairly antiquated. For instance, they have to buy the cheapest food. So if you’re in upstate New York, and the cheapest quote you get is from California for carrots, you can’t buy carrots from the local family farmer who’s growing carrots because it’s not cheaper than shipping them in from California. What’s wrong with this picture? And it seems to me that we could look at more toward—we could look more toward a prior—some sort of priority or status in the system of deciding what to buy where, local—on buying local. ROBBINS: Tammy Grubb, last question. Do you want to—you want to speak it or should I read it? OK. If you have time for another question, could consumers see declining prices at prices at some point for crops, such as beef and soybeans, that are losing their export markets? BERTINI: I would expect, yes. I would expect. ROBBINS: So, well, I suppose— BERTINI: But almost everybody’s losing their export markets for now. ROBBINS: Yeah. Well— BERTINI: Just one other point, if I could say, as we started talking about this, Carla, before. When you think about farmers, think about how there’s not a lot of stability in the life of a farmer. They have land, yes. They need, usually, loans. So they’re subject to the rates of the loans. They are totally subject to the weather and what’s going on, whether or whether or not it will be a successful year for them in terms of what they grow. They’re totally challenged by prices and what’s going to happen with their prices and customers. And so while they can run a stable operation, they have to constantly go with the flow about these different things that are totally out of their control. Now, on top of that, they have to deal with whatever the exigencies are of the tariffs and the increase in cost and decrease in salability—or, the ability to sell overseas. So it’s a tough life for farmers. And yet, the people that are doing it love it and really dedicate their lives, their families dedicate their lives, to this work. So our finding ways in order to respect that and have other people—and write about it, so that other people know the love and the patience and the challenges that are put into being a farmer, to get food on our table at an affordable price, the better. ROBBINS: Thank you. That was just a great sum up. Thank you all for wonderful questions. And send us what you’re writing about this. And I turn this back to Irina. FASKIANOS: Yes. Thank you, Catherine Bertini and Carla Anne Robbins. We really appreciate it. As Carla said, we will share out the video and transcript and circulate articles. As always, we encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest developments and analysis on international trends and how they’re affecting the United States. And please share suggestions for future webinars. You can email [email protected]. Thank you all, again, for being with us. We wish you all a happy holiday season. ROBBINS: Thanks, Irina. Thanks, Catherine. Thanks to everyone. FASKIANOS: Thank you. ROBBINS: Bye. BERTINI: Bye.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu, the Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China studies at CFR, discusses China’s sovereign wealth funds, investments in the United States, and considerations for policy responses to foreign land ownership trends in the United States. Elizabeth Blosser, vice president of government affairs at the American Land Title Association, discusses recent state legislation on the purchase of U.S. property by foreign entities and individuals. A question-and-answer session follow their opening remarks. TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. CFR is also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Through our State and Local Officials Initiative, CFR serves as a resource on international issues affecting the priorities and agendas of state and local governments by providing analysis on a wide range of policy topics. We appreciate your taking the time to join us today. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record, and the video and transcript will be posted on our website after the fact, at CFR.org. And we are delighted to have over four hundred state and elected officials registered, representing over forty-seven states and U.S. territories. We are pleased to have Elizabeth Blosser and Zongyuan Liu with us today. We’ve shared their bios with you, so I will just give you a few highlights. Elizabeth Blosser is vice president of government affairs for the American Land Title Association, ALTA, which oversees the association’s state legislative efforts including annually monitoring state bills related to the real estate, mortgage, and title industries. She also serves on the board of directors for the Property Records Industry Association. Ms. Blosser has worked for legislators on the federal, state, and local levels, and has extensive experience managing political grassroots and public relations campaigns. Zoe Liu is the Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development, finance, emerging markets, and more. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System?, published by Cambridge University Press, and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions, published by Harvard University Press. So thank you both for being with us today for this conversation on foreign asset ownership in the United States. Elizabeth, I thought we could begin with you, if you could give us a little background on specific policies regarding foreign land ownership in the United States up to now, and how could recent changes at the state level shape U.S. foreign policy going forward? BLOSSER: Yeah. Happy to talk about that. And want to say, we really appreciate the Council on Foreign Relations including us in this conversation. We especially appreciate it because we are not foreign policy experts. I have to admit I woke up this morning still a little bit surprised I was doing a webinar for CFR. But what we are experts on is the safe, certain, and legal transfer of real estate in this country, something that represents approximately 13 percent of GDP. So we think that’s very important. So there’s been a lot of conversations about foreign ownership of U.S. real estate. What we’ve tried to do over the course of the past year is really offer ourselves to legislators, regulators, and others who are looking to develop policy around this issue as subject matter experts. Notably, we don’t take a position on any of the legislation being considered in the space—again, because we’re not foreign policy experts. But, you know, whether you think these bills are good or bad, or right or wrong, there’s a lot of conversations happening around this. They’re going to continue. And so from our perspective, it is really important that whatever policy is developed and whatever laws are enacted, they fit within the current system of real estate transfer so that you don’t run into unintended consequences and you’re not adding risk for American real estate and landowners. If you think about it, besides a place to call home, real estate really represents one of the greatest generators of wealth in the country. So whenever you’re talking about shaping real estate policy, how you do that really matters. It matters to millions of everyday Americans. And so what we want to do is provide some subject matter expertise to make sure that there aren’t unintended consequences. And we think that can be accomplished by adding some procedures and protections within this legislation. And the good news is, there’s a lot of existing real estate law that can be leveraged for that purpose. So I’ll talk a little bit about some of the legislation we’ve seen. And it’s been extensive. So about a year ago all of a sudden we started seeing a lot of legislation pop up on this issue of foreign ownership of U.S. real estate. And to date, fourteen states have enacted legislation. Some states have enacted several bills. And this is—this is just last legislative session, so last year. And then most recently in Missouri, there was an executive order issued on this subject. Two states have enacted legislation for study committees on the topic. And as of right now, there are almost 150 active pieces of legislation in over thirty states moving on this topic. So it is a lot to track. As Irina said, we track all the legislation related to really real estate, title, and mortgage. And when you think about different topics, this one is just sort of off the charts in terms of the number of bills that are out there. Notably, there’s really no model legislation that has emerged in this space. But all the bills that have been introduced or enacted do two main things. One, they identify restricted parties. And, two, they identify impacted land or real estate. So in these bills, a restricted party could be a foreign government, it could be an entity, it could even be an individual. And the impacted properties could be anything from just agricultural land, to property that’s adjacent to or in a certain radius of critical infrastructure or military bases, or, in some cases, it could be all real estate within the state. So just to kind of give you an idea of the bills that passed last year, six dealt just with agricultural land, two with critical infrastructure, four with a combination of those two, and then eight touched on real property throughout the state, to some extent. So with these two elements, there are some challenges that come in with definitions. When you’re talking about these restricted parties, there’s not necessarily lists available to know who exactly is a restricted party. Some states have addressed this by pointing to federal lists, such as the Department of Commerce’s foreign adversary list, or the Department of State has a countries of particular concern list. But, you know, that has been a challenge. And you would think sort of definitions around real estate would be kind of straightforward, but unfortunately, that’s not as straightforward as you might think. For example, property that is considered ag land or farmland today can literally be a strip mall tomorrow. And conversely, property that’s not farmed today can be farmed in the future. And, you know, today we also have a lot of urban farming on land that is, you know, definitely not considered traditional agricultural land. Likewise, it’s really hard to figure out what properties are within a certain radius of critical infrastructure or military bases, even knowing where all of those places are. You kind of have to put together a map, and map that out, and survey. And, you know, there may be all sorts of reasons why you wouldn’t want to do that. So there’s definitely some definitional challenges as you look at this legislation to definitely be thinking about. Unfortunately, the more sort of focused and narrow the legislation is, the harder it is to sort of sort through some of these aspects. I mentioned unintended consequences. And I want to talk a little bit about what that might look like. And I will preface this by saying the majority of unintended consequences we think about from our perspective have to do with legislation that simply voids transactions. So rather than a divestment process of some sort, there’s legislation that says, you know, whether a transaction with a, you know, restricted party happens in the future, and in some cases in the past, that transaction is just simply void. Well, that creates some problems, because obviously, the local land records are going to show something different than that. So, you know, think about it from a consumer perspective. You have a seller who unknowingly sells property to a restricted party at some point. That transaction is considered void. Presumably, the property would revert back to the seller. So at that point, does the restricted party, you know, have reason to sue the seller for false enrichment, or others who were part of the transaction? From a business standpoint, liens that are on properties owned by restricted individuals that are, you know, transactions later considered void are unlikely to get paid. They’re not going to get paid. And those liens could be anything from a mortgage, to a mechanics or construction lien of some sort, or a tax lien—for all of those the local officials listening in today. And so, you know, that becomes a challenge, and that those liens are unlikely to be covered at that point. You know, if a transaction is voided, basically what a lienholder has is a note, but there’s no property to secure that interest anymore. From sort of an economic standpoint, transactions that are voided bring into question who owns the property. So, as I said, presumably the transaction’s voided, the property goes back to the seller, but the land records are going to show somebody else owns that property. And so there are serious questions about who has rights and responsibilities as it relates to that property. That kind of puts the property into limbo and creates clouds on title. That’s going to make that property unmarketable in some ways, really hard to transfer in the future. It certainly is going to impact the value of the property. So that’s obviously something to think about from a real estate standpoint and just an overall economic standpoint. And then, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that, you know, we are concerned about the liabilities some of these bills might cause for real estate professionals, whether you’re talking about a realtor, a lender, a title professional, or arguably even a county recorder. So those are some of the concerns that we have with legislation. I’ll talk about, just high-level, a few things that that we think can help address these concerns. I will say though, at the outset, I think we can expect a lot of changes going forward, right, in terms of what this policy looks like. This is a very new issue. As I said, there’s no—there’s no model that’s emerged. I think there’s going to be a lot of lessons learned as states look to implement this legislation. I think there’s probably been some lessons learned already. Notably, there has been litigation around some of this legislation. I assume there will be additional litigation that we will see. So that will impact things. Then you also have whatever’s going to happen at the congressional level. Certainly Congress is looking at this issue, and that might impact what states do in the future and what they’ve done in the past on this issue. So I think we can expect, you know, sort of changes and evolution in policy. And I think that that’s fine. I was talking to someone at the Uniform Law Commission recently about, you know, their process for updating model legislation or uniform legislation that’s been enacted in many states. And, you know, they do take a look after a set number of years at, you know, what’s happened, what new information has emerged. And they go back to legislators and ask them to make changes as necessary. And so we might see that happen. So there’s three main pieces we think about in terms of strengthening the policy around domestic real estate aspects. First, we think there needs to be an established enforcement authority within the legislation. There needs to be somebody within state government who has responsibility for enforcing the legislation. In many cases, that’s the state attorney general’s office. Sometimes it’s another agency within the state, depending on the type of real estate that’s been impacted. Second, we think there needs to be divestment processes built into the legislation versus just voiding transactions that have happened in the past, or may happen in the future. And that divestment process can really follow whatever is established in the state. It could be judicial foreclosure. It could be partition or receivership. Most state laws allow a restricted party a certain amount of time to divest themselves of the property. And if that doesn’t occur then there’s forced divestment after that period of time, hopefully using, again, established real estate transaction processes. And what that’s going to do is make sure that lienholders are paid, that the local land records are updated, and all that information is correct. And then finally, we really think it’s important for some protections to be built in. They need to be built in for the seller or previous owners of the property. They also need to be built in for future owners, so that, you know, the fact that the property was at one point an impacted property owned by a restricted individual should not impact somebody’s property rights down the road, a future owner of that property. I think there needs to be protections for lienholders and then also protections for real estate professionals. So that’s kind of a high-level overview. And I’m happy to take questions and dive into some of these issues in more detail. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. And, Zoe, let’s go to you to talk about the trends in Chinese global investments, and how the purchase of land and other assets in the United States has changed over the years. LIU: Yeah, sure. Thank you, Irina, for inviting me to do this. It’s truly a pleasure to, and I’m always happy to work with our state and the local legislators. So, you know, what Elizabeth just to described from a high level, in particular a lot of these reasons—the legislative changes or updates with regard to land, including farmland and real estate investment, or property in general—a lot of these really happened, I would say, starting from the past year, in particular. There was this one particular transaction. If I remember correctly, it was this Chinese company called Fufeng Group. Its U.S. subsidiary made an investment—or, purchased about three hundred acres of land in North Dakota. And the piece of land that this Chinese company purchased happened to be about twelve miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base. So basically, it’s about a ten minutes’ drive by car. So I think it matters in the sense that first—from two perspectives. The first piece is, it’s important to understand who is the foreign investor which could become the asset owner of a particular piece of U.S. asset. And then, secondly, it also matters in terms of both national security perspective as well as in cases—in particular, in cases where CFIUS—which is the federal level panel of government agencies that review the national security implications of foreign investment in the United States—in cases where CFIUS do not necessarily have jurisdiction, then perhaps local legislators and state legislators can actually step in and fill the gap. So I wanted to just sort of first talk about, you know, who—why the individuals matter. You know, in this particular case that I talked about, the Fufeng Group, it’s a private company. And it’s, you know, based in China. But the reason why this triggered a national security concern is not necessarily because of the state ownership, but because this investment is related to a piece of the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which is reportedly to be home to a U.S. top secret drone technology base. So from that perspective, is there is this inherent—despite that this is a private Chinese company, the nature of the investment, in the sense that it’s—the location is in the proximity to a top-secret military base, makes this—from a national security perspective, triggered concerns. But in this particular case, CFIUS really did not have the jurisdiction in terms of rejecting the investment. Therefore, the investment could have moved forward. But what ended up happening, or obstructed the investment, was that actually local officials also reacted and took matters on their own hand. In particular, the city council sort of stepped in and say that, well, you know, despite that perhaps the city council may not necessarily directly have the authority to revoke the transactions, or so on so forth, there are other ways that the city council can actually do, such as the granting permit, or developing infrastructure, and so on, so forth. So there is this kind of disconnection—or, in other ways, it’s not necessarily, like, disconnection in the sense of what national security might—what national security concerns might mean for the local legislators, right? So the Fufeng Group—the Fufeng investment was a private company. And then that does not necessarily mean that all Chinese investment in the United States or all Chinese asset owners in the United States are, you know, not state-owned. In fact, there have been a lot of state-led investment from China in the United States. And a particular group of investors would it be the state-owned institutional investors, such as China’s sovereign funds. The most influential one would it be this group called China Investment Corporation, which is now the world’s second-largest sovereign wealth fund. And the size, as of the end of last year, the total assets under management of this state-owned institutional investor, China Investment Corporation, or CIC, was more than $1.1 trillion. In other words, the size of the asset under management by the state-owned investor is bigger than the GDP of Saudi Arabia. So from that perspective, you know, if you look at how these companies—how China’s state-owned institutional investors invest in U.S. assets, they will invest in not just in real estate. They also invest in startup companies in companies that have critical pieces of technologies that are to the interest of the Chinese government. So from that perspective, you know, not we—from local governments—from local legislators’ perspective, you need to know what—you need to know not just national security concern at that very high level, but you also need to know who is the investor or who are the potential asset owners. And then from that perspective, the inherent debate, perhaps, many legislators, especially at the local level, you are facing, is the promised job delivered by foreign investment versus the national security concern, because, you know, obviously, coming with foreign direct investment, there will be job created, there will be infrastructure being upgraded, and so on, so forth. So if the investment were to be blocked for national security concerns, then that also perhaps means the jobs were not necessarily going to be generated. Therefore, it perhaps would work if there were the so-called white-knight leaders that could have potentially step up when there is undesired foreign investor try to secure a piece of strategic asset, viewed as strategic from either federal or local perspective, and as a counterbalance, try to sort of defend against undesired foreign direct investment—foreign investors. And then finally, if I can just conclude by quickly saying that, you know, despite there is this whole panel of CFIUS review at the federal government level, again, I wanted to emphasize that CFIUS do not always have jurisdiction over every single piece of investment. And on top of that, could have foreigners, foreign investors, try to bypass the CFIUS review process? There are ways that foreigners could potentially do that. And one way to do that is to set up joint ventures by partnering with a U.S.-based company or U.S.-based institutional investor, so that the joint venture from a review—from a regulator’s perspective, this investment is made by a domestic entity rather than a foreign entity, despite the source of money comes from foreign investors. So, this—again, this ultimately relies upon deeper scrutiny from actual—the recipient of the investor, whether it is a local company or it’s a local government—it’s a local land managed or owned by a local legislator. So know your investor, and know the source—ultimate a source of money actually matters a lot, too. I will just stop there. And happy to answer any questions. FASKIANOS: Thank you both. Now, we’re going to go to all of you for your questions. And we also encourage you to share your experiences as well, because this is a forum for you to exchange your ideas. So with that, of course, we are on the record. (Gives queuing instructions.) So let’s go first—we have a raised hand from Mayor Mark Allen. Q: Hello. This is Mark Allen. Can you hear me OK? FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: OK. Thank you very much for having me today, for your discussion. Just wanted to chime in a little bit on foreign ownership within America. My state rep—she’s a state senator, Donna Campbell. I know she introduced some legislation during the most recent legislative session in Texas to prohibit foreign ownership of land in Texas. I’m not sure if her bill did ultimately get approved and voted on. But, you know, I do have a little bit of concern about that. We do have, you know, two projects going on in my city, which is a little bit east and northeast of San Antonio. And we have an existing factory that—it’s called Aisin AW. And they build transmissions for Toyota. And so they do have a Toyota factory that builds Toyota Tundra trucks down in San Antonio. And so what they do there is they build the transmissions there in our site, in Cibolo, and they, you know, put them in trucks and bring them on down there. But we do have another prospect. And they’re from South Korea. And they’ll be making electrolytes for Tesla. And so we’re—we still haven’t finalized the deal, so I can’t name the company. But we are, you know, a little bit concerned if there is, you know, like, a restriction on ownership of the land. Because I know that Aisin AW, it’s a company based out of Japan. And they did buy land in our city, in Cibolo, and then annexed into our city. And I’m assuming that the—our South Korean partners would be interested in doing the same. And so if this legislation does happen to go through in Texas, I just wanted to know if there’s any federal laws that would potentially trump that law that Donna Campbell, you know, put forth, or if there’s any compromise that could be made where the landowner, which could be an American, they could rent to the—to the foreign company. So that seems to me like a win-win, because the landowner would have a nice tenant there, with I’m sure they’ll make a pretty good amount of money on the rental situation even if it’s a long-term, you know, twenty, forty, maybe even sixty-year contract. So, just wanted to get your opinions on if there’s anything on the federal level that might trump what Donna Campbell is trying to do there in Texas. FASKIANOS: Who wants to—Elizabeth, do you want to go? BLOSSER: Yeah, I’ll jump in and just share that Texas is not on our list of states that enacted any legislation last year. So I know there’s been a lot of conversations at the state legislature there. I anticipate there will be additional conversations. You know, in terms of things happening at the federal level, whether it be legislatively or existing law, I think there are some good questions. There’s certainly a lot of questions that have been raised over fair housing. That would be less of sort of this business type of transaction, but more, you know, restricted parties being individuals and impact on residential real estate. I think a lot of these questions are going to be considered by courts and decided in the courts. And so I would—I would not even hazard to guess how that’s going to go. But there will be some impact there. In terms of the leasing question, I would just—like, some of these bills do include language regarding leasing. So I would take a look at that. And again, you know, in terms of who’s a restricted entity and what’s impacted property, it’s been a really wide variety of, you know, restricted parties. So it could be just government—foreign governments, right? And then they could be specifically laid out. Or it could be just certain types of foreign entities. So there’s a wide variety of impacted both property and restricted parties. So, you know, it’s kind of hard to say, but, you know, certainly we’ve heard too about, you know, the pending projects and other things. And I think Zoe did a really good job laying out sort of that balance on that point. LIU: If I can just quickly chime in here. I personally do not think that there would be any federal political willingness to—a political willingness to stop or obstruct this type of—at least from CFIUS perspective—this kind of investment, I mean, would not—would not be—would not be under the same type of national security review process, because neither Korea nor Japan are treated the same way as China, because they are U.S. allies. And then on top of that, one beneficiary—one beneficial factor would be the Inflation Reduction Act, which is very much in favor of localizing or near-shore and friend-shore and onshore a lot of the manufacturing product, and in terms of facilitating the renewable transitions. So from that perspective, I do not think there will be any federal obstruction in terms of making the—obstructing the investment. But there is the FIRRMA, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018. So, FIRRMA expanded the scope and the reach of CFIUS. It include—sort of, it has the authority over certain transactions, including undeveloped land in proximity to facilities that are considered as sensitive for national security concerns or connected to critical infrastructure, critical technology, and so on, so forth. So from that perspective, unless the specific investment made by Toyota or the Korean company has any kind of that problem, I do not think existing legislator or the new legislature would potentially trigger any kind of obstruction. But, you know, Elizabeth can correct me if my interpretation of the legislation is wrong there. Q: Yeah, thank you very much for your answer there. We do have an Air Force base in the area, Randolph Air Force Base. And so it is within ten miles, for sure. So that could be a bit of a concern. But I think with them being friendly nations that we should be OK. LIU: Right. But the CFIUS did, I think, last year, right after the Chinese company investment—Chinese food company investment case, CFIUS did add a couple more U.S. Air Force—just U.S. military bases on sensitive—on the sensitive list. So you might want to check if your military bases is on that list. Q: Thank you very much. BLOSSER: I’ll just also throw out there, because I don’t think it’s been shared yet, but generally the countries that are listed in the state legislation that’s been introduced or enacted are China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria. That’s kind of—pretty close to comprehensive list. So those are—those are the countries that usually are referenced in the legislation. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next question from Justin Bielinski, who is the director of communications in the office of Wisconsin Senator Chris Larson: What is the best source of data to find out what level of foreign asset ownership exists at the state and local levels, and to compare how your state, community stacks up against other U.S. jurisdictions? Elizabeth, do you have that—those sources? BLOSSER: That is a great question. And I don’t think that there are necessarily great sources for that data. As I mentioned, Mississippi and South Dakota passed legislation to do a study on these types of things. It’ll be interesting to see what data comes out. I don’t—you know, I don’t think it will be possible to go into a state and try and look at all the land records and figure out things like beneficial ownership and the, you know, status of individuals who own various property. Maybe you can take a segment and study that and get that information. So, you know, I have seen some studies come out. I know the National Association of Realtors puts out some information annually on this topic. And I’m not exactly sure how that information is gathered. From a title perspective, we certainly do not gather or retain that type of information. And then, of course, it’s strictly prohibited and illegal for us to ask about country of origin, or political affiliation, or things of that nature in a real estate transaction. I don’t know, Zoe, if you have other data sources. LIU: I was going to mention the National Association of Realtors, their annual report. They basically talk about, you know, to what the level of the transaction—what are the levels of transaction, whether they are—you know, what type of investment, whether they invest in—or, they purchase in existing homes or new homes, or to what extent the transaction is made by cash. And if all transactions are made by cash, then there are kind of further financial security, or safety, or legal implications. And then in terms of farmland investment, I think USDA—the Department of Agriculture, USDA, the Department of Agriculture does have this farm service agency. They put out an annual report on foreign ownership and foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land. So they would show, like, which countries are the largest share of—which country owns the largest share of U.S. agricultural land, and how much. So that would be another source. In terms of—in terms of just the generic foreign investment at the federal level, and to what extent it triggers a CFIUS review, CFIUS does have annual report. I think they have done the 2023 press release. But I don’t think the 2023, like, statistics is out yet. But CFIUS do have annual report. But I would—in general, I would agree with Elizabeth that there is really a lack of comprehensive data sources that allows for just a direct oversee who owns what and in what types of asset. Then if you—if you broaden the definition of—which, if we just take a holistic view of foreign asset ownership in the United States, then this asset can include financial assets, that include U.S. Treasurys, corporate securities, or any other types of financial investment. And for those type of data at the federal level, especially for U.S. Treasurys ownership, the Treasury Department published numbers on that, and then the Federal Reserve also have comprehensive data in terms of who—what types of foreign investors owns what type of U.S. financial assets. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Mayor William Lewis of Havelock, North Carolina, with a raised hand. Q: All right. Can you hear me good? Can you—OK. FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: Cool. Yeah, Will Louis, down here in eastern North Carolina. We have Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. And one thing you guys have not mentioned that we’ve seen a little bit of a trend on, particularly around our training ranges where there are some really, really large properties that are available, is this digitizing property rights. Where they’re selling—where we have one organization that is an American organization that is using foreign money to digitally purchase properties, and then sell NFTs based on those properties. And I don’t know—I haven’t—in all the things I’ve heard about CFIUS, and doing research on that, that’s a different level of scrutiny. And, you know, that can be changed so fast at any given time that you don’t even know who does own a property. And being able to protect those pieces around the range. Have you guys heard anything about that, or have any insight on what levels of scrutiny that may require in the future? And just for reference, we have a project right now that in the next month may get sold that way, that is literally right next to our ranges. And if you present the company to CFIUS for review, they’re an American company that just sells the digitized pieces of the property. So a whole different level of concern. BLOSSER: We could probably do a whole conversation on NFTs and real estate, and what that looks like. You know, this is an issue the Uniform Law Commission is looking at, and others. You know, my understanding of the process is basically you have an LLC that owns properties, and then really you’re transferring the LLC versus the property. And so that brings up lots of questions about local land records. And so it’s a big—it’s a big conversation. I will say, as somebody who’s a board member for the Property Records Industry Association, you know, the way that we do land records in this country is very unique. And it is very local, where those records are kept at, generally, the county level, local government level. You know, to protect people’s property rights, they record on the local land records, and that provides constructive notice. And really, that’s been the backbone of property ownership in this country for hundreds of years. And, you know, is it a perfect process? No, absolutely not. Is it arguably the best process out there today? Yeah. So I think when you start talking about NFTs and that piece, there’s a lot of issues that get pulled into that. But that’s a really interesting perspective. And, frankly, something I’m going to do some more research on, and educate myself more on. LIU: I really do not have too much to add here to the conversation, you know, besides what Elizabeth just mentioned. But one thing that struck me was a lot of the—a lot of the transactions could potentially be made by cryptocurrency, not just for—obviously, not just for NFTs, but also for the transaction of a particular real house. Like, you know, they—in the transaction, the property owner would just say that she or he would be happy to take cryptocurrencies. And that—for me, that is something very interesting, because it has direct implications for tax payment and a lot of things like that. So far, I mean, I’ve never made a transaction using cryptocurrency and I really do not know what are the implications for taxation. So perhaps, you know, for Mayor Lewis’s office, you need to, you know, take the entrepreneurship and pioneer work to help us understand it better. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from representative Aundré Bumgardner, who is Connecticut house assistant majority leader: Maine stands out among U.S. states for its high percentage of foreign-owned land. Why is this the case? Elizabeth, you want to? BLOSSER: I don’t know that I have a good answer to that one. I don’t know what the—what would necessarily be a driver of that. LIU: If I can—if I can quickly chime in here, just very briefly. I mean, I did—I’ve done research in food security. And as far—if I understand this correctly—and please do correct me if I’m wrong—if I understand it correctly, that a lot of the foreign-owned land again in Maine, a lot of this is related to farmland, and a lot of this is related to concerns with regard to food security. And there are—it’s probably worth looking into who are the owners of land in Maine. My guess is that, given that China, just in the grand scheme of foreign-owned U.S. agricultural land, China’s ownership is less than 1 percent. So probably, China’s ownership and may be minimal, whereas countries like Canada looms large in the—in the totality of the picture, and the geographic proximity perhaps makes sense, both from food security perspective, as well as invest just for the resource such as timber. FASKIANOS: Thank you. And he had a follow-up question: Why do we see more foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural lands than we do from Black, indigenous, or Latino farmers combined? How does U.S. policy through the farm bill shape this phenomenon? And again, I don’t know if you study this, Elizabeth, or you’ve been following this. BLOSSER: Yeah. You know, again, sort of data on some of this stuff is limited to get a big picture. A lot of times, state-by-state, people have a good view on this. I do think, going back to kind of discussions in Congress, there are a lot of conversations about this issue, specifically as it relates to agriculture. You know, I would not be surprised to see legislative language make itself—and, you know, its way into to the farm bill, especially given that the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, recently released a report just within the last couple of weeks kind of talking about concerns about communication breakdown between the USDA and CFIUS. So, you know, I could—I could see some policy on the federal level come down through the through the farm bill. You also might see something come through the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA. LIU: Elizabeth, you just reminded me in terms of the legislation, restrictions in terms of foreign ownership of U.S. land. Like, not all state has legislative restrictions against foreign ownership, which is—which reminds me of the earlier question with regard to Maine. If I remember it correctly, I don’t think Maine has foreign—has restrictions against the foreign ownership. But it—although it did have procedures to say, if it’s a foreign investor, if a foreign owner, you have to report it. But there is no restrictions. But, you know, a lot of these legislative changes over the past year would mean that, you know, perhaps more state would enact additional foreign ownership restriction laws, or even become more restrictive. But just a thought. FASKIANOS: Thank you. In the Q&A there’s some resources. Evan Meyer has shared an article that you might want to take a look at. And Zamora Gaston, legislative assistant for Representative Marcus Evans from Chicago, Illinois, is—responds to Justin’s question: In Illinois, certain foreign persons have to disclose their agricultural land holdings to the Illinois Department of Agriculture. And there is a bill that has been proposed during this session that will require the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability to provide to the legislature a report that details noncitizen purchases of real estate, and percentage of noncitizen-owned real estate, and offers recommendations to make it easier for citizens to purchase real estate. So that might be legislation that other states might want to look into raising, passing. There is a written question from Joshua Ward—Councilman Joshua Ward from Pemberton Township in New Jersey: Being that we live right next to McGuire Air Force Base and we have farmland that is owned by foreign entities, it raises concern for my local citizens about this. Is there a way local municipalities can ask for assistance in investigating concerns? BLOSSER: You know, I think those are conversations to have with your state elected officials in terms of, you know, what policy is coming down the road. But sort of the last conversation reminds me to say that, you know, sort of restrictions, especially as it relates to ag land, aren’t necessarily new. We saw a whole slew of bills get passed last year but, you know, there’s bills—or, legislation that’s been on the books, you know, back to the ’80s, and before, regarding reporting or review of certain transactions by, you know, a state’s department of agriculture, or others. So I would also check to see sort of what maybe some of the requirements in your state currently are. FASKIANOS: So I’m going to ask a question. How do you balance legitimate national security concerns with legislation that might discriminate against individuals of certain national origins? LIU: I guess it’s really hard, because it seems to me that a lot of these national security concerns, so it’s specifically directed against undesired investors, that are either U.S. rivals or U.S. competitors, or entities that are—entities or individuals that are under U.S. sanctions. So it’s very easy for the—for investors—for the investment process, meaning the law firms and the companies that are the recipient of the investment, to be—to self-select themselves outside of the investment process. So from that perspective, I do not—I really do not have a good answer, Irina. FASKIANOS: OK. Let’s go next to—oh, Zamora Gaston has a raised hand. So follow up. Q: I was wondering—Zoe touched on this earlier—about investments from foreign nationalities and startup companies, or businesses in general. I was wondering if there was any congressional oversight or what state-led legislation that you would suggest we look into. LIU: Thank you for the question, Zamora. Right now, there are there are—there are I don’t know how many bills in Congress that are specifically targeting China. But the direct, most relevant piece of a process would be the CFIUS national security concern review process. And in order for the review process to be triggered, the—it has to either satisfy national—it has to satisfy a certain percentage of investment, and in a particular company. And that particular company would also be of strategic relevance, or in an industry that are relevant for national security. Now, in the current political scenario, everything can potentially be national security concerns. So, I would anticipate a lot of additional, more stringent CFIUS reviewing processes against Chinese investment, specifically state-led investment, coming up. In terms of how local legislators can respond to this, I mean, this is really—this is really a calculation that local legislators you need—you would have to have the conversation among yourself, and with your—with your own constituencies. Because, again, who are the investors matters, and to what extent these investors, whether they are Chinese, they are Russian, they are from the Middle East or elsewhere—to what extent they have state connections. The point here—the reason I wanted to make this point is because not all investment—not all, you know, foreign investment in the United States from U.S. competing countries are state-owned entities. And there are private company that really just want to invest for business purposes, right? But the over-securitization of investment make things very difficult. Therefore, you would really have to have a serious conversation in terms of what are the—what are the priorities? Do you think the job being created, the tax revenue being generated, is—basically, the benefit, like, outweighs the potential risk? And if you do think—you do value the benefit, then what are the countermeasures that you can compartmentalize the national security risk? In other words, you take the investment but how are you going to safeguard the national security concern that, you know, CFIUS or other people who are opposing the investment might raise? You know, part of this could be through, like, a contract. You can have specific, concrete terms by saying that, you know, there should not be forced technology transfer, and so on so forth. So this is really a conversation that you would have to have with your own constituencies and figure out is the national security concern a real concern, and then do you have the countermeasures that can balance out the potential national security threat. Q: Thank you so much. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Zoe, to build on that—let me see. Wait. We might have—Vice Mayor Ted Bui from Fountain Valley, California has a question: Foreign entities that are here on an EB-5 visa, are they a concern as well? And, second, are we only concerned with entities that are here from China, or are there other countries as well, like Vietnam? LUI: I can chime in on this, and Elizabeth can correct me and enrich the conversation. So on the EB-5 visas, this is interesting, because with EB-5 visas you really apply to business and business individuals and in the context of China in particular these are usually rich individuals who are—who want to eventually migrate to the United States. So from that perspective, as long as—you know, as long as you have a clean understanding of this person’s source of money, and the connection, and the company’s capital structure—meaning to what extent—again, it’s know your investor and know the business person. As long as you have a clear understanding of the ultimate source of money, there is a high chance—there is a high chance that a lot of these projects coming from a private individual may be from somebody who wanted to, you know, eventually migrate to the United States. Therefore, the national security concern would be not as severe as a state-owned enterprise investment. And then, I would say that not just China. Right now the reason why China becomes a national—Chinese investment become a national security concern was because a lot of the—a lot of the demonstrated patterns by—at least, viewing from Western investor—Western policymakers and Western companies perspective—China tend to have strategic motivation, or their investment is not necessarily just for pure financial returns. And the Chinese—the strategic nature of Chinese investment also not only apply to U.S. companies, but also to their investment in other companies—in companies in other countries as well. One good example, would be 2015 Chinese company’s investment in a German robotic company called KUKA. And this Chinese company, again, it’s private. It’s called Midea. It’s basically a Chinese appliance maker. It has—it does not make anything advanced, like, you know, weapons or anything. No, it just, like, make refrigerators, or toasters, or coffee machines. But this company is very interested in making itself a pioneer in smart home appliances, like smart appliances. Now, whenever—now, when everything touched upon the issue about “smart” or “chips,” now it started to touch upon a series of other things. Like, you know, do you want your coffee machines to start spying on you? Things like that. But I’m not saying that, you know, the Chinese appliance makers are doing that. But those are the kind of concerns in countries like the United States and—or Western companies. And when you—when a Chinese company, even a private company investing in a robotic—in a piece of company that are strategically—yes, it is very much of the German industry’s strategic concern. The reason why the process could go forward, could go through, was primarily for two reasons. First, in Germany there was no other competing bidders willing to offer a counter bid. And then, secondly, at that time, Germany did not really have a robust investment screening process. But from the U.S. perspective, we really did. We have a robust review process. And oftentimes, we can mobilize our private investors to sort of offer a counterargument. Now, not just to China. There are other countries like Russia, as Elizabeth mentioned earlier, from other countries that are considered as U.S. rivals. But I’m not exactly sure about Vietnam, because Vietnam is very much a beneficiary from a lot of this supply chain diversification. BLOSSER: Yeah, I’ll chime in. Again, you know, we don’t really comment on the foreign policy, you know, who should and shouldn’t be included in these bills, what—and, you know, impacted property should or shouldn’t be included in in the bills. But this kind of goes back to what I said earlier about definitions matter in this legislation. Like, how do you draft definitions that are somewhat evergreen, right? You’re putting this into law. That really gets to what you’re trying to accomplish on a foreign policy front, whether that be around the restrictive parties or the impacted properties. And that is difficult. I don’t think there are great answers to that. Like I said, you know, some states have, you know, referenced the federal lists, which sort of narrows it down and allows you to deal with sort of changes over time. In terms of Vietnam, I don’t recall off the top of my head them being listed in any of the bills that I’ve seen. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Well, we are at the end of our time. Thank you very much to both of you for doing this—Elizabeth Blosser and Zoe Liu. We appreciate it. And to all of you, for your questions and comments. We will send out the link to the webinar recording and transcript, as well as other resources. You can follow Elizabeth on X at @EABlosser, or you can also follow the American Land Title Association at @ALTAonline and Zoe at @ZongyuanZoeLiu. Zoe is also a contributor to CFR blog Asia Unbound. So you can sign up for that if you wish to receive notifications for that at CFR.org. And, as always, we encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest developments and analysis on international trends and how they’re affecting the United States. And we also encourage you to share your suggestions for future webinars by emailing us to [email protected]. So, again, thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate it. (END)

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