Tuesday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) warned against China buying up farmland in the United States, which could lead to the adversarial Asian superpower gaining a foothold in U.S. food production.

“Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Tucker, and thank you for shedding some light on something that I think is very, very important for our country to discuss,” he said. “And a lot of people aren’t don’t know about it and aren’t talking about it. So this is really important, and I appreciate that. And what can be done? Well, there are several things that we can be done. We’ve done some things actually in this Congress that just passed in the latest appropriations bill to tell the USDA to come back to us with a report telling us about foreign ownership of agricultural lands in this country by adversaries. Certainly, China is one of those.”

“China is a threat to our country,” Newhouse continued. “Unfortunately, and you’ve been talking about a lot of different things tonight, the Biden administration is hurting the U.S. by their policies, and they’re actually helping China, and I’ve got legislation that I think will go a long ways to stopping China from starting an agricultural monopoly in the United States of America. I want to preclude the Communist Chinese government from purchasing agricultural assets in the United States of America.”

The Washington State Republican lawmaker touted legislation, which he said was a “preemptive” measure to prevent China from gaining that foothold.

“Well, just like you said, what does the country need?” he explained. “Energy. They need food. They need water. China understands this, China — you know, I’ve had the opportunity to take some trips to other parts of the world, and I’ve seen firsthand that some of the things that China is doing in other countries in Central America and South America, I’ve heard of things they’re doing in Europe and in Africa. We don’t want them to get a foothold in our country.”

And I think, you know, 10 to 20 years from now, if we don’t act, people are going to look back and say: Why didn’t you guys do something? The time to act is now and be preemptive so that we can prevent China from gaining a foothold in our important domestic food production, and that’s what my legislation will do.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor