Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday to Newsmax that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are spurring “multifaceted negotiation” with other countries as well as an expansion of markets that did not happen under the previous Democrat administration.
“The bottom line is this: When the president came down that escalator the first time almost 10 years ago, talking about tariffs, talking about how unfairly Americans and our producers and our manufacturers and our farmers, how unfairly we have been treated for decades now, how he was going to realign the entire economy, not just about tariffs, but back to deregulation, back to making the tax cuts permanent, etc., this is part of that bigger plan,” Rollins told “Wake Up America.”
She pointed to Trump’s warning about “a period of uncertainty” and said that “the world is reacting,” and “the market is adjusting” since the tariffs were imposed but also that “countries are coming to the table.”
“I think we’ve had now almost 70 countries [come to negotiate],” Rollins said. “I had a delegation from Ireland at USDA yesterday, so we keep powering forward. But the president’s vision, which we support 100% across the Cabinet … is that it is time to put America first. And that means no longer abiding by a tariff regime that the world is implementing on us versus us implementing on the world.”
Asked about mitigating China’s retaliation for U.S. tariffs, Rollins said that a number of Trump officials are engaged in “multifaceted negotiation” with Beijing.
“As they are in conversations, China, I believe, will come to the table,” she said. “I think that the world needs America more than America needs the world at this point. But what we have to do is expand the markets across the world. We’ve got to move into new markets so that our farmers and ranchers aren’t as reliant on certain countries across the world. We’re going to Vietnam; we’re going to Japan; we’re going to India. We’re moving out across the world. Under [former President] Joe Biden, there was no expansion of markets; we went to a $49 billion deficit. So that, for the longer term, is really important.”
While cattle ranchers and others are “leaning into” the tariffs, Rollins said, “the row crop farmers are at very thin levels of profitability,” if they are “profitable at all.”
“They are all planting right now,” she said. “We won’t know the full extent of this for another couple of months, but that’s right, they are worried. But we’ll be prepared, as we were during the first term. If in fact there is serious harm and consequences, then we’ll be able to mitigate that, and we’re already getting organized and prepared to do it.”
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