The Protecting America Initiative (PAI) has pointed out many times that food security is national security. Without proactive policies in place to secure America’s food supply chain, our country will always be vulnerable to foreign threats. That is why PAI is calling on both parties in Congress to act without delay to pass a new “Farm Bill” in Congress. 

On December 30, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced movement on a key plank of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Farm Security Action Plan, which was unveiled earlier last year as a multi-agency effort to protect American agriculture, a critical part of maintaining national security.

It has been almost two years since the U.S. passed updated agency budgets. The current spending plans used by the Departments of State and Defense were drafted in 2023. During that period of time, China’s centralized government has been able to make dramatic changes to its pursuit of world dominance. 

As the Protecting America Initiative has argued before, when individual states impose a patchwork of laws that force agricultural suppliers to meet requirements that contradict federal standards, they undermine farmers and agricultural manufacturers, leaving them vulnerable to competitors from adversarial nations like China. The disruption caused by these extreme state laws undermine a robust domestic food supply and ultimately our national security. 

On his recently concluded trip through Asia, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth met with counterparts in Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and South Korea about the mounting threat from China and to “ensure that China understands that we have a credible deterrent.” During the trip, while on his way to a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) defense ministers, the Secretary emphasized that China will remain a key focus of the upcoming National Defense Strategy. 2022’s National Defense Strategy had warned that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic, and informational warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare.”  

The Protecting America Initiative has outlined dozens of ways that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing seeks to influence and shape life in the United States. The common feature of these efforts is increasing the CCP’s power in the U.S. and around the world.  

In today’s international order, America’s economic independence and national security are only as strong as our control over the materials that power them. From smartphones to fighter jets, the United States depends on an increasingly fragile global supply chain for the critical minerals that increasingly shape both our economic and political future. These materials are no longer just components of our economy. Rather, they are the backbone of our defense systems, energy infrastructure, and microchips that facilitate our domestic innovation. Today, however, the CCP controls the vast majority of its global production and processing.

The U.S. House Special Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Government (CCP) recently convened a roundtable of experts to address the means by which communist leaders in Beijing evade sanctions. The Special Select Committee found that the CCP has developed a sophisticated system for getting around punishments and U.S. mechanisms intended to keep sensitive material from the communist government. 

This week, the Protecting America Initiative launched an ad campaign highlighting the national security implications of relying upon medical supplies that are made by Chinese companies. From the potential for supply disruption to backdoors allowing for unfettered access to intimate medical data, U.S. reliance on Chinese medical devices places patients at risk of harm and exploitation. Here’s how. 

In July, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins rolled out a plan to safeguard America’s food supply and established American agriculture as a crucial component of national security and a high priority for President Trump’s administration. Following in the footsteps of the National Farm Security Action Plan, House Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson has included a commonsense provision in the Fiscal Year 2026 Interior and Environment appropriations bill that would go a long way toward establishing certainty for American farmers, ranchers, and agriculture industry. At a time when foreign adversaries, like the Chinese Communist Party, are threatening to disrupt our fundamental national and food security, we applaud Congressman Simpson for helping champion a practical fix to a challenging problem. 

One method that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used to influence people around the world through higher education. Despite efforts from Congress to impede the Chinese government’s influence, the communist regime has not stopped its attempts to influence U.S. higher education.  

In an era where digital infrastructure and national security are increasingly intertwined, leaders in Washington are taking steps to confront the growing threat of foreign influence over American technology. 

Last week, President Trump made the greatest stride in recent history toward restructuring global trade to ensure fairness for the United States when trading with partner countries like China. With the new tariff rates now in effect, the President has notched a big win for his agenda and for the U.S. economy. Unsurprisingly, numbering among the chorus of critics are companies that stand to gain the most by keeping the prior status quo intact. Indeed, big businesses have been raising prices on consumers and disingenuously blaming tariffs even when there has been no evidence of cost increases.  

It has been known for some time that the Chinese government has made it a priority to acquire American farmland. The Chinese government and their representatives have been buying up U.S. land at a rapid pace and now own almost 300,000 acres. Over the past few weeks, however, we may have seen the most blatant acknowledgements by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that obtaining agricultural property is at the cornerstone of their strategy to dominate the globe. 

This week, the Trump administration unveiled a multi-agency effort that formally acknowledges American agriculture as a crucial component of national security and lays out concrete steps to protect our food and agricultural systems from foreign adversaries. The threat to those systems is all too real, with two separate instances of Chinese nationals smuggling biological materials into the United States having come to light in just the past month.  

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been engaged in a long-term, sophisticated effort to undermine America’s economic dominance and threaten our national security. H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), includes policies designed to fight CCP aggression by making America more resilient and prosperous. Here are the top ten policies in the OBBB that help mitigate communist China’s efforts by strengthening our economy and securing our country.  

This week, U.S. authorities arrested Chengxuan Han for smuggling biological materials into the United States. A Chinese national who planned to spend a year conducting research at the University of Michigan, Han admitted to sending four packages containing regulated biological material related to roundworms – in one instance even hidden within the pages of a book – to individuals at a University of Michigan laboratory and making false statements about those packages. Upon arrival at the Detroit Metropolitan airport, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers found that Han had wiped the contents of her phone three days before arriving in the United States from China.

This week, two Chinese nationals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) with smuggling “a potential agroterrorism weapon” into the United States. One of the pair is a “loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party.” She used her boyfriend’s connections in the research community to try and smuggle the dangerous, illegal pathogen into the U.S. under the guise of conducting scientific studies at the University of Michigan.

This month, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the U.S. Department of Defense delivered its Worldwide Threat Assessment to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations. Central to DIA’s assessment of China was that the nation “continues to advance its global capabilities to confront the United States and its allies across the diplomatic, information, military, and economic domains” and that it continues to undertake “focused efforts to undermine popular and political support for U.S. military alliances and security partnerships,” all with the goal of presenting itself as the preeminent and undisputed world power.   

For decades, America’s economic relationship with China was marked by imbalance, exploitation, and complacency. Beijing’s systematic use of unfair trade practices — from intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers to state subsidies and currency manipulation — hollowed out American manufacturing and left key industries vulnerable.