Three senators lead effort to ban Chinese-owned GNC from military installations over spying concerns

Efforts to remove Chinese-owned GNC from US military bases gained momentum this week as Sen.Ted Budd, R-N.C., introduced companion legislation to a House-led bill targeting the nutrition retailer.Some 85 GNC stores currently operate on American military installations.Rep.

Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., first introduced a bill to ban the company from doing business on American bases, citing national security and espionage concerns.Now, fellow North Carolina Republican Budd is leading a similar effort in the Senate, decrying the stores as hubs to “exploit personal data.” Budd, joined by Sens.Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., introduced the Military Installation Retail Security Act, which would prohibit the Department of Defense from allowing businesses owned by adversarial nations – including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – to operate on US bases. At North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, four GNC stores service approximately 53,700 troops, nearly 10% of the US Army.  “Adversarial nations have no place owning and operating businesses on US military bases, all the while gaining personal identification information of American citizens, just to turn a profit,” Budd said in a statement.  “We shouldn’t be allowing Chinese-affiliated companies in the United States, let alone on our military bases.This bill will ensure our adversaries can’t exploit our military,” Cotton added. While much of Congress has focused on preventing Chinese land acquisitions near US military installations, Harrigan said he was alarmed to find that a Chinese-owned company was already operating on US bases largely unnoticed.“It’s even crazier [than foreign land purchases],” Harrigan told Fox News Digital last week. In June 2020, vitamin retailer GNC filed for bankruptcy and was fully acquired by Harbin Pharmaceuticals – a partially state-owned Chinese enterprise that had already purchased a 40% stake in the company in 2018.In 2019, GNC agreed to integrate its manuf...