President Donald Trump is ready to bail out American farmers if commodity exports continue to fall, particularly involving pork and soybean sales to China, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Sunday.
"First of all, the prayer is that that doesn't need to happen — but secondly, if it does, for the short term, just as in Trump 1, we are preparing for that," Rollins told CNN's "State of the Union."
During Trump's first term in office, the government spent tens of billions of dollars in farm subsidies amid a smaller trade war between the United States and China.
Rollins said Sunday that the full consequences of the current trade war won't be known until harvest time later this summer or in early fall.
"But we are watching it and analyzing it every single day and we're preparing for it," said Rollins. "I'm in constant conversations with our friends on the hill where the funding comes from, and everyone is committed ... food security is national security. So it isn't just about protecting the farmers and ranchers, it's protecting the great American experiment and the great American dream."
Meanwhile, Rollins also reported that egg prices have started to drop in some U.S. locations, with drops elsewhere to follow.
In March, egg prices climbed to a record high at $6.23 per dozen, and on Sunday, Rollins blamed the Biden administration, telling CNN that when Trump was inaugurated in January, "the price of eggs had increased 237% under the last administration."
"When you look at the wholesale cost of eggs, which drives the retail cost, the retail will follow soon," said Rollins. "The actual wholesale cost of eggs is down 58% in the last six weeks. In parts of the country, we've seen a significant decline in the retail cost. In some parts of the country, it has not followed yet, but it's coming."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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