Ag. Sec’y Rollins: We Discussed Bailout Due to Trade Issues Like in ’19, But That’s Not What Farm Aid Package Is

On Tuesday’s edition of CBS’s “The Takeout,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that when the liberation day tariffs were announced, there were plans to have a bailout for farmers like there was due to the fallout from China phase 1 in the first Trump administration, if need be, but that’s not what the current farm aid package is. She also said that with fertilizer, “we needed to take the tariffs off of those immediately to immediately help the farmer.”

Rollins said, “[W]hen the president announced his liberation day earlier this spring, we were talking about that, if there was any fallout, similar to the fallout from China phase 1, if you remember, in 2019, when the president was negotiating and then they did — Sonny Perdue, then the Secretary of Ag. and the team did a pretty significant bailout package based on that. This one’s different, but my point is, when we started these conversations, it was always about that, that, if in similar to 2019, we find ourselves in the same position, based on all of the data, then we’ll come around and do something similar. Interestingly, Major, what we found is that, actually, all of these tariff and trade renegotiations have not, in fact, compromised our farmers in this farm economy. What has really compromised them was A. The skyrocketing of inputs under the last administration. And B. The fact that there were no new trade deals. So, we went from a trade surplus in 2020 to a $50 billion agriculture deficit after the four years of Biden.”

She added, “Fertilizer, the president realized, and we had a lot of talks about this, that fertilizer continued to inch up, again, for the Ukrainian War and some other reasons. So, we needed to take the tariffs off of those immediately to immediately help the farmer. But I don’t think there’s any big message there that the tariffs didn’t work, it was just how do we, basically, spot this out to be able to help the farmers right now.”

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