During his 2024 campaign for the White House, then-candidate Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to block Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing U.S. farmland as part of his “America First” agenda, and shortly after winning a second term, his Administration moved aggressively to curtail Chinese student visas.
Today, however, President Trump has reversed course on both issues, a development that threatens to isolate many in his base who view China as an existential threat to U.S. sovereignty. Trump’s pivot on the issues was drawn into focus following his visit to Beijing this week for a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In an interview on Friday following the diplomatic visit, Trump defended his turnaround, while offering little explanation for his change of heart.
“Frankly, I think that it’s good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture, and many of them want to stay here. I think it’s a good thing,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on May 15, defending his plan to approve some 500,000 visas for Chinese students.
Read more: What to Know as Trump Goes Back and Forth on Chinese Students in U.S.
In the same interview, Trump defended the Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland, directly contradicting his own campaign speeches in which he vowed to stop Beijing from “buying up our farmland” and warned that foreign ownership threatened American independence.
“Look, it’s not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop. You want to see farmers lose a lot of money, just take that out of the market. But they’ve had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot during the Obama Administration, and he did nothing about it,” Trump said.
Some prominent Trump supporters have spoken out against the shift. MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich shared a clip of the Hannity interview and asked: “Has China defeated our country?”
Conservative commentator Robby Starbuck criticized the president’s remarks on social media, arguing that Chinese students should be treated as potential security risks and that Chinese companies should be barred entirely from owning American farmland.
Former Georgia Representative and MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has fallen out with Trump over the last year over her campaign to release the Epstein files, wrote on X that it was in fact “not common sense” to permit either Chinese students’ enrollment or Chinese farmland ownership.
Chinese farmland ownership animates Trump’s base
For years, many Republicans have treated Chinese land ownership in the United States, particularly agricultural land, as both a security concern and a political rallying cry. States, including Texas and Florida, have passed laws restricting land purchases by Chinese nationals, often invoking fears of espionage or strategic influence. Just last year, Trump’s own administration pledged to intensify scrutiny of foreign agricultural ownership, particularly from China, CBS News reported.
In Congress earlier this month, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), who chairs the House Select Committee on China, introduced a bipartisan bill to restrict Chinese purchases of American farmland and real estate near sensitive military sites, underscoring how firmly the issue has become embedded in Washington’s bipartisan national-security agenda.
Ahead of Trump’s meeting with Xi, lawmakers backing the legislation argued that existing loopholes leave sensitive military and agricultural assets vulnerable. Moolenaar said in a statement that “food security is national security.”
TIME reached out to Rep. Moolenaar’s office for comment.
China owns a ‘tiny sliver’ of U.S. farmland
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, foreign entities own roughly 46 million acres of agricultural land in the United States, about 3.6% of the nation’s total farmland as of 2024. Chinese investors held nearly 248,000 acres, which is 0.02% of all U.S. farmland, and slightly less than 1% of foreign-held acres, a comparatively small share dwarfed by holdings from Canada (34%), the Netherlands (10%), Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom (6%).
Farmland policy is similarly more complicated than political slogans suggest. Analysts note that while land purchases near military installations may warrant scrutiny, broad prohibitions on foreign ownership can conflict with property rights and investment norms.
Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, told CBS News that Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland remains “a tiny, tiny sliver” of total agricultural land and that fears about it are often overstated.
International students, particularly those from China, meanwhile, contribute billions of dollars annually to the U.S. economy and remain a crucial financial lifeline for many American universities. Business leaders and higher-education advocates have long argued that broad visa restrictions harm American competitiveness more than they protect it, The New Republic reported.
The backlash to Trump’s comments comes amid his Administration’s broader policy of pursuing détente with China in return for trade deals and energy.
His China visit focused on economic cooperation between the two global rivals, as well as a host of international issues, including the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. One result of the visit was a notably softer U.S. stance on Taiwan.
President Trump said following the visit that he was undecided about whether to approve a planned $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, casting doubt on U.S. support for the self-governing island that China has long claimed as its own territory.
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