Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sang a different tune about the Trump administration Tuesday afternoon, one day after it was revealed she wrote a scathing text message to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about the administration’s decision to bail out Argentina.
“President Trump has been the most pro-farmer president perhaps in our lifetimes, perhaps in history,” she told Fox Business before running through a list of reasons why farmers are suffering in America right now. Most of her reasons had to do with the Biden administration and not the tariffs that have “hurt” U.S. farmers, as the president described the situation.
Minutes later, she told reporters, “The amount of tariff money that is coming into our country is stunning. The president had a vision, he’s effectuating the vision, the vision is pretty remarkable. The whole entire world economy is now realigning around American products.”
She had a different view when she allegedly sent a text to Bessent during the United Nations General Assembly last Tuesday. In a photograph of Bessent’s phone, taken by AP, Rollins ripped how the Argentina bailout hurt American farmers.
“We bailed out Argentina yesterday (Bessent) and in return, the Argentine’s removed their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China, at a time when we would normally be selling to China. Soy prices dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us,” she wrote.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Rollins’ team for comment.
As Rollins correctly pointed out in the photographed text message, Trump’s tariffs effectively led to a panic in the American soybean industry. American tariffs on China led the country to place a retaliatory tariff on American soybeans. After the U.S. gave Argentina’s right-wing regime a $20 billion bailout, the country removed the tariffs on its soybeans, and so China began purchasing soybeans from Argentina.
American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland made the situation clear after the bailout was announced, saying in a statement, “China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market. The U.S. has made zero sales to China in this new crop marketing year due to 20% retaliatory tariffs imposed by China in response to U.S. tariffs. This has allowed other exporters, Brazil and now Argentina, to capture our market at the direct expense of U.S. farmers.”
Trump promised to bailout the farming industry using the money the administration is receiving from tariffs until the benefits he envisions his tariffs will create materialize.
Rollins echoed that sentiment during her Fox Business appearance, “It is going to be gangbusters, but right now the farm economy is not in a good place.”
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