Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
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BISMARCK – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) joined Ladies of Another View on BEK News to discuss the Fufeng Group land purchase, the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), and government transparency. Excerpts and full video are below.
On the Fufeng Group Land Purchase:
“The important point is [the Grand Forks City Council] finally made the right decision [to terminate the Fufeng project], albeit it took them too long and they seemed to need someone else to make the decision for them – which, by the way, the Air Force never did. The Air Force only wrote a letter saying [the project] poses a significant security risk, which was not new news. That was obvious to 5,000 people in Grand Forks and a whole bunch of others.”
“The best news in all of this is, these ‘heroes’ as you call them – and they are – the people who stood up for their community, they set the tone for the country. They’re going to change the way we [approach agricultural and other foreign investments] in the country.”
On Empowering CFIUS:
“CFIUS largely exempts agriculture. That’s the first problem. […] You have a CFIUS process where the Secretary of Agriculture is only a situational participant. We have legislation out to change that, to make [the U.S. Department of] Agriculture a permanent member of CFIUS. I personally believe agriculture represents the most important critical supply chain we have, and that’s our food.”
Senator Cramer cosponsored two pieces of related legislation, the Foreign Adversary Risk Management (FARM) Act and the Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security (PASS) Act.
On Government Transparency:
“What good is information if you don’t share it [among appropriate government agencies]? And then you get to the bigger problem, and that is sharing it with the American public. The reason there’s so little trust is […] we’ve gotten to the point where we only let people know when we think they should know, and even then, we’re not so sure. That leaves too much to the imagination. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the Executive Branch, in particular, on how well we inform [the public] of threats and securities…”