Foreigners would be banned from purchasing real estate near dozens of additional U.S. military installations under a rule the U.S. Treasury Department proposed Monday.
Under the proposal, the jurisdictions covered by the department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would expand to include 50 military installations in 30 states.
“President Biden and I remain committed to using our strong investment screening tool to defend America’s national security, including actions that protect military installations from external threats,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
The expanded jurisdiction builds on the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act Congress enacted in 2018. That law allows the Committee on Foreign Investment to review foreigners’ leases or purchases of real estate that is “in close proximity to a military installation or another facility or property of the United States Government that is sensitive for reasons relating to national security,” according to a Treasury Department statement about the proposed rule.
Real estate transactions that fall under that purview include areas that would allow a foreign person to collect intelligence about the activities at nearby military installations or to expose those activities, increasing the risk of foreign surveillance.
Based on a recent Department of Defense analysis, the new rules expand the Committee on Foreign Investment’s jurisdictions to real estate that is within a one-mile radius of 40 additional military sites, within a 100-mile radius of another 19 military sites and between 1 and 100 miles around eight sites the committee has already listed in its regulations.
The expanded list includes an Army ammunition plant in Pennsylvania, a chemical depot in Colorado, a radar site in Alaska, an arsenal in Michigan and a manufacturing center in Ohio.
