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

3/21/2025

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

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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'

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