Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has been widely criticized for failing to explain which countries the U.S. will mass-import beef from.
Rollins was speaking to reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, where she was pressed on Donald Trump’s plans to lower grocery prices by pausing tariffs on up to 300,000 metric tons of imported foreign beef.
However, the head of the Department of Agriculture gave a less-than-reassuring response when asked which countries the U.S. will be sourcing the beef from.
“I am not privy to talk about that,” Rollins said. “I think the conversations are still going on, and that [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer] is finalizing what exactly that looks like, and I think the president’s involved in that as well.”
Rollins then quickly moved on and did not provide any further information about the foreign beef imports.
Her comments were widely mocked after a clip of them went viral on social media.
Former Democratic Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill posted on X: “Why is this a damn secret? If we are promoting foreign beef and importing it, don’t we have a right to know where it is coming from?”
Brian Tyler Cohen, a progressive political commentator and YouTuber, posted: “The Trump administration is going to flood our markets with foreign beef and they’re not going to tell you where it’s coming from.”
Gen Z liberal influencer Jack Cocchiarella added: “We’re definitely eating horse meat.”
“It’s literally her job to be ‘privy’ to this information,” Missouri congressional candidate Fred Wellman wrote.
Author Don Winslow posted on X: “Sounds an awful like BULLS--T to me from an administration that has lied more than 30,000 times during just the first Trump admin.”
Rollins gave an equally evasive response about where the foreign beef would be coming from during an interview with Spectrum News on Tuesday.
“I am actually not part of any of those conversations, so I am not sure what that looks like. I think we’ll know very soon,” she said.
The “America First” president has drawn widespread anger from members of his own party over plans to rapidly increase foreign beef imports in a desperate attempt to control rising food prices.
“Americans want U.S. beef on the table–not foreign imports,” Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the GOP majority whip, posted on X.
Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts added: “Flooding the market with lower quality beef compromises Nebraska farmers and ranchers.”
Rollins was forced to defend the move during her interview with Spectrum News. “This is a very short-term fix from the president’s perspective, that he believed necessary to get lower-cost beef onto American plates,” she said.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Agriculture for comment.
