Pat Harrigan Makes The Case For The Military Installation Retail Security Act

4/11/2025

On "Forbes Newsroom," Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) made the case for his Military Installation Retail Security Act.

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Transcript

00:00Especially news just broke a little less than an hour ago, so we have a wide-ranging conversation in store.

00:06But before we get to that, I do want to talk about some legislation that you introduced earlier this month.

00:11It would prohibit businesses owned by certain foreign adversaries from operating on U.S. military bases.

00:17To start off the conversation, can you talk to us about the inspiration behind the legislation?

00:22I think everybody knows broadly we've been trying very hard in Congress to find a way to prohibit our adversaries,

00:29including the Chinese Communist Party, from purchasing land around our military bases.

00:34What we have overlooked is where they are already operating on our military bases.

00:40And that's actually the point of the Military Installation Retail Security Act,

00:43which is taking any country or any company that is owned by a foreign adversarial nation,

00:51whether that's China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea,

00:54and making sure that they cannot operate from our military bases.

00:57It seems like common sense, but unfortunately, this is something that was overlooked in our government,

01:03and we are overlooking it no longer.

01:05We are going to take a company that we identified that's wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party,

01:10that's GNC, the supplement company, and we are going to remove them from our military bases.

01:15You're saying that this was overlooked.

01:17I mean, how did this come to your attention?

01:19Talk to us about that.

01:20Well, someone came to our office and actually said that a good portion of the product that GNC sells is manufactured in China.

01:27And so we started to look into that.

01:29But through that investigation process and the due diligence,

01:32we actually discovered that GNC is owned by a company called Harbin Pharmaceuticals,

01:38which is a company that's wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party.

01:41How this actually happened and how it played out at 83 different retail locations on our military installations

01:48is actually just kind of an exploitation of a whole that was in our system.

01:54GNC got onto our military bases as a wholly owned U.S. company.

01:58Then in 2018, it sold 40% of its company, a minority stake, to Harbin Pharmaceuticals.

02:04In 2020, GNC actually went bankrupt and Harbin bought the remaining 60% out of the bankruptcy process.

02:11There was no review or oversight with respect to a Chinese Communist Party-owned company operating on our military bases

02:21because when the initial sweep was done, it was an American-owned company.

02:25We're fixing that through the Military Installation Retail Security Act with respect to GNC,

02:31but we are also going to force base concessions and AFES to do a review of all of the concession contractors

02:40that are underneath their purview to make sure that we don't have anyone else besides GNC that fits into this category.

02:48So there are over, from what you're saying, over 80 different GNC locations on different military bases across the U.S.

02:55What concerns do you have specifically about GNC?

02:58Is there any indication that the CCP is infiltrating the military bases through the GNC locations,

03:04or is this more of a preemptive measure?

03:07It's the bottom line.

03:09GNC says that information is not being transmitted back to China.

03:13But this is very similar to the argument that TikTok is making,

03:17effectively asking the folks in the United States to just trust them,

03:22that they have our best interests in mind.

03:25I think that's a bridge too far when we're talking about our military service members,

03:29particularly as I was at Fort Bragg this weekend.

03:32There's actually four different locations where GNC is operating on Fort Bragg.

03:37And Fort Bragg, as many people know, is home to our Special Operations Forces.

03:41Some of them roast elite special operators are based down at Fort Bragg.

03:45So just the access and the placement, the availability and potentiality to abuse the information of our service members

03:54and use that for personal or intelligence or somehow any type of state action as they decide to build targets in this country,

04:03it just seems like a bridge too far.

04:05I think we all are, you know, free and fair marketers in this country.

04:10You have the right to sell to whoever you want to in this country.

04:14But I think that it just goes beyond common sense that if you sell to the Chinese Communist Party,

04:21that you're still allowed to operate on a military basis.

04:24I think that's just more risk than we can accept here, Brittany.

04:28You alluded to it, but I do want to read what GNC CEO Michael Costello did say, according to Bloomberg.

04:34They're reporting he said this, quote,

04:37Our Chinese ownership sees no personal information, and in fact, they have zero access to our data and our networks.

04:43And he also added this, nothing gets transferred to China in terms of personal information or other data.

04:48Do you not believe that or you're saying, hey, it is not even worth the risk?

04:52It's not even worth the risk.

04:54I mean, look, when they're telling the American people, our Chinese ownership takes your privacy very seriously.

04:59I don't think that we can take that seriously as someone that is operating on our military bases with access to our military personnel.

05:09That's just the bridge too far.

05:11We are not about, you know, allowing folks to take advantage, particularly our adversaries, to take care, to take advantage of our country,

05:20let alone our troops on our own military bases.

05:23GNC needs to leave our military installations.

05:25What's interesting is you started this conversation by saying this was overlooked.

05:30Are there any other retailers from foreign adversaries like China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea that have companies that are operating on military bases aside from GNC?

05:40We don't know.

05:42And that's actually part of what the Military Installation Retail Security Act is going to study.

05:48It's going to force Department of Defense to study this and say, okay, hey, let's do a big, huge sweep of all of our contracts,

05:55all of our contractors, and make sure that they don't have foreign adversarial ties to countries that have intentions that are completely averse to ours,

06:04so that they do not and don't have the access and placement to take, you know, negative actions against our country and against our service members.

06:14It seems like a pretty common sense approach to me.

06:17Congressman, I feel really lucky in my conversations with members like yourself of the Four Country Caucus.

06:23It's a bipartisan group of members of Congress who are veterans.

06:27Do you have bipartisan support with this legislation, especially when it comes to that caucus?

06:32Well, we are actually pursuing it right now.

06:35All of the feedback that we've had so far is completely universal.

06:39This is something that we actually just put in and filed independently because the likely vehicle for this is actually just to go into the National Defense Authorization Act,

06:50which is the big, huge document that controls our nation's defense spending every year.

06:57And so that would end up going in.

06:58It would get included in the NDAA.

07:00This could absolutely be a standalone suspension bill where we suspend the rules and take it directly to the floor because it should have such bipartisan support.