Rollins Teases Major Announcement Today on U.S. Cattle Herds

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins appeared Tuesday evening on NewsNation and said, “There is a really big announcement coming tomorrow on what we’re going to do to restore and revitalize our beef herd in America, which ultimately will bring the prices down.” 

When encouraged to share the news during the episode of The Hill last night, she declined, saying that she will likely be at the White House today to be part of the announcement and implied she didn’t want to spoil that moment.

Rollins’ statement coincides with President Donald Trump’s words last week about beef prices being “higher than we want it” and that his administration had a plan to bring them down “pretty soon.”

The U.S. cattle market ended last week in turmoil as futures tumbled in reaction to Trump’s comments, which were then followed by a weekend statement that the U.S. could import beef from Argentina. Both live and feeder cattle contracts fell sharply lower and left producers and traders searching for clarity.

“We can rebuild our beef herd, which is at its lowest in 75 years, which is why the prices are so high, right?,” Rollins said on the network. “Demand is moving up as people want more protein, and the supply is moving down.”

Analysts say Trump’s comments had triggered algorithmic trading programs that amplified price swings on headlines. Elliot Dennis, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln livestock economist, told The Fence Post that the drop was “due in large part to algorithm trading from the Trump headline on doing something big for the beef industry.” He added that the market was already overbought and vulnerable to correction, with traders looking for an excuse to take profits after weeks of record highs.

Argentina exports premium steaks for its own domestic market and for discerning export markets, but for mass export into the U.S. the economics and infrastructure tend to favor frozen, boneless, leaner cuts. The U.S. market often demands high volumes of consistent, large-scale supply, and Argentina’s export trade has historically oriented toward frozen blocks and lean cuts for major buyers (especially China) rather than a flood of boutique steak cuts.

In her appearance on The Hill, Rollins reinforced her support for Trump’s strategy.

“He is very convicted how important it is to make sure that first goal, that Americans can feed their families the best food that we have available, which is a little MAHA nutrition,” she said of the president. “But secondly, no one has been more outspoken or I believe more supportive of our farmers and our ranchers than this president has perhaps in our lifetimes, perhaps since Abraham Lincoln founded the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

The ag secretary addressed several other topics during her 10-minute-long interview, including the purchasing of farmland by foreign entities and whether Trump would sign a law banning it.

“I believe that is of paramount importance,” she replied. “I have been working on this for a long time, even before I was in this role, as I’ve become even more aware, 233,000 acres that was once owned by an American farmer is now owned by China or another adversarial nation. This is a national security issue. So yes, I would hope we’re able to work toward that.

“But here’s the good news, even if we don’t get there, we know how Congress is, even if we don’t get there, the states like Sarah Sanders in Arkansas, in one session, she passed a law to ban farmland in Arkansas. Then the next session, she actually moved out any Chinese owned and reclaimed that farmland in the state of Arkansas. So even while in Washington, we’re going to work on it, the states may be the place where we’re going to see the most action.”