Missouri AG Threatens to Seize China-Owned Assets to Enforce $24B Judgment for Covid Pandemic

Missouri AG Threatens to Seize China-Owned Assets to Enforce $24B Judgment for Covid Pandemic

Last month, a federal court in Missouri ruled against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other Chinese entities, holding them liable for $24 billion in damages related to actions that exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic.

The judgment stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office in 2020, which accused China of hoarding personal protective equipment (PPE) and misleading the global community about the virus’s severity and transmissibility during its early stages.

“This is a landmark victory for Missouri and the United States in the fight to hold China accountable for unleashing COVID-19 on the world,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a statement.

“China refused to show up to court, but that doesn’t mean they get away with causing untold suffering and economic devastation. We intend to collect every penny by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland.”

Bailey’s office said the judgment was six times larger than the previous largest judgment in the state’s history.

Missouri’s attorney general indicates he is rapidly moving to seize Chinese assets across the U.S. to collect on the judgment.

Missouri’s attorney general is threatening to seize Chinese assets across the U.S. to collect $24.5 billion awarded in a lawsuit against China stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, but experts were skeptical Monday, with one saying, “Good luck with that.”

…“Those assets are not required to be within Missouri and can be located anywhere in the United States,” Bailey said in a statement Monday. “While we have not partnered with other states on this particular suit, we encourage others to work to hold the Chinese government accountable and seek justice for victims.”

China seems unmoved by the ruling.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week that it does not recognize a U.S. federal judge’s recent ruling siding with Missouri’s claim that China hoarded personal protective equipment during the pandemic, harming the state and its residents. China called the lawsuit “absurd” when it was filed in 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, and it did not participate in a brief trial held in Missouri in January.

Hey China,

You owe Missouri $24 BILLION.

I just won a judgment in court.

Pay up — or we start seizing assets and farmland.

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) March 7, 2025

As of yet, no assets have been seized, and the process to do so (especially in other states) is not clear.

Duncan Levin, a former federal and state prosecutor in New York City who’s represented foreign nations in U.S. courts, described Bailey’s comments as “press release talk.”

According to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture Statistics, Chinese interests owned about 44,000 acres (17,800 hectares) of farmland in Missouri at the end of 2023 — one-tenth of 1% of the state’s 44 million acres. Bailey said he will work with President Donald Trump’s administration to identify Chinese assets in the state.

But Levin said it’s not clear that the Chinese government or the other defendants in the case — as opposed to Chinese individuals or companies — actually own anything in Missouri. He doubts Bailey has the authority to seize assets outside Missouri, and even claiming assets that can be seized could take time, he said.

In the wake of concerns that Legal Insurrection covered over China’s attempt to procure farmland near Air Force bases in North Dakota and California, a review was done of how much land is actually owned by China in 2023.

The results were not clear.

A review by NBC News of thousands of documents filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, shows very few purchases by Chinese buyers in the past year and a half — fewer than 1,400 acres in a country with 1.3 billion acres of agricultural land. In fact, the total amount of U.S. agricultural land owned by Chinese interests is less than three-hundredths of 1%.

But the review also reveals a federal oversight system in which reporting of foreign ownership is lax and enforcement minimal.

Any foreign individual or entity that buys or leases U.S. agricultural land is required by federal law to report the transaction to the USDA within 90 days, yet some were not reported for years — in one case, more than 20 years. And in that same time period, no one has been fined more than $121,000 for failure to make such a report.

…In those 35 states, NBC News found 11 purchases by Chinese entities that had been reported to the USDA from Jan. 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023.

Several of the disclosures were not recent sales, and at least one was a repeat of a previous disclosure. Another was not reported to the government till it had been revealed in the media.

Perhaps the DOGE team can review the country’s expenditures, track down exactly what China owns, and help Missouri collect on the judgment.

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