Ag Sec. Brooke Rollins Defends Tariffs: 'The Farmers Understood When They Supported President Trump'

last week

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins speaks to reporters outside the White House.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00Thank you so much, Secretary Rowland.

00:24Hi everybody.

00:25Of course.

00:26Good to see y'all.

00:27You talked about tariffs and farmers' reaction to them, the promise that, you know, in three

00:32or four years, the promise from the President, they'll have a prosperous economy.

00:35Yeah.

00:36How do you help them through?

00:37In the meantime, last time there was a lot of support in actual subsidies to farmers.

00:41Is that an option now?

00:42How big could that be?

00:43Yeah.

00:44Thank you for the question on tariffs.

00:45There is no doubt, and I've said multiples of times, I've talked to now at this point

00:49hundreds of farmers across the country in the last 30 days since I was sworn in.

00:53And the number one question almost every single time is the tariffs and how that's going to

00:58affect a very difficult farm economy right now.

01:03And my answer is this.

01:04The first is that the President is very focused on realigning the American economy to better

01:08serve all Americans.

01:10Second, the farmers understood when they supported President Trump, he's always talked about

01:15tariffs, whether it was 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, and again, 2023 and 2024.

01:22They supported him in 80%, 90% numbers.

01:25So they understand his vision, but also understand there may be some short-term challenges with

01:31that, certainly in this current farm economy.

01:33But the third thing I'll say is the President on the front end is very focused on what this

01:37will do to our farming community, but also has tasked me that as we move forward, similar

01:42to the first term, that we have some programs in place that would potentially mitigate any

01:48economic catastrophes that could happen to some of our farmers if, in fact, this moves

01:53forward and some of our farmers are significantly hurt.

01:57We're working that out right now.

01:59Yes, ma'am.

02:08Well, listen, the President, when he was running and was elected, from my perspective, on a

02:13mandate from the American people, he ran on a lot of different messages and a lot of

02:18different promises.

02:19But for me, as I was sort of running an outside organization and certainly have supported

02:24him and known him for a long time, the two key issues I think he focused on that really

02:28resonated with Americans was first, securing the border, and second, bringing down the

02:32cost of food.

02:33And so all of the children that were here yesterday, it was an amazing education event,

02:37but also these families who under Joe Biden have been struggling to put food on the table.

02:41I think we'll see those costs continue to come down.

02:44Of course, I have been very focused on egg prices in the last month especially, and we've

02:49seen those come down, too.

02:50Listen, the market is a tricky thing.

02:52We'll see what the numbers look like.

02:53We've got another big report coming out, I think, on Monday, and the next big report

02:57comes out the following Friday, and we'll continue to watch that.

03:00But this President is in it for the long term, and that's the blessing, frankly, of working

03:05for him is that a lot of times in politics, it's like short term, short term, short term.

03:09Short term, short term.

03:10We're going to make this decision to keep these people happy.

03:12But he is doing this to completely restructure the American economy for all Americans, and

03:17that's a long-term play.

03:18So thank you.

03:19You mentioned that the U.S. will start importing eggs from South Korea and other ends of those

03:24countries.

03:25How many eggs are we talking, and can you name the other countries?

03:29Right now, we've got Turkey and South Korea importing eggs.

03:32Just yesterday, I talked to a couple of other countries that will soon begin importing.

03:35We haven't signed that deal yet, so I don't want to say who it is.

03:38We are talking in the hundreds of millions of eggs for the short term.

03:42So not insignificant, but significant enough to help continue to bring the prices down

03:48for right now.

03:49And then when our chicken populations are repopulated and we've got a full egg-laying

03:54industry going again, hopefully in a couple of months, we then shift back to our internal

03:59egg layers and moving those eggs out onto the shelf.

04:01What's the status of bird flu and its impact on chickens?

04:06Well, the good news is part of the five-point plan we laid out about a month ago.

04:10The most important thing to control the bird flu, the avian flu epidemic that has been

04:16raging through our egg layers for almost two years now, this really started about two years

04:20ago, is that the most proven way to solve for that is through biosecurity measures.

04:25And what that means is locking down your barns.

04:28The number one prong on our plan was to invest a significant amount of money to do audits

04:33across the country to have USDA help these egg-laying companies to secure their barns.

04:38And since we began doing that most recently, we've seen a significant decline in the bird flu.

04:44Thank you all so much. Good to see everybody.

04:46Thank you, Madam Secretary.

04:47Thank you all so much.

Ag Sec. Brooke Rollins Defends Tariffs: 'The Farmers Understood When They Supported President Trump'

Category

Transcript

Recommended