Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins detailed a trip to the United Kingdom, which she will make after President Donald Trump announced a new deal with the U.K. on Thursday.
Trump revealed that his deal with the U.K. would cement the relationship between the two countries, adding that it is a “great honor” to have the U.K. as part of his first announcement. Rollins said the president’s deal marked the beginning of realignment, arguing that the U.K.’s 9% tariff on U.S. goods was “almost double” the U.S.’s 5%.
Rollins acknowledged that there are “details to be worked out,” but she would travel to the U.K. on Sunday to spend a week there.
“Well, we’re going to visit, obviously, with my counterpart in the U.K., talking to their government,” Rollins said on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria Bartiromo. “We’ll obviously be talking a lot about the deal that is being announced today, but also, I’ll be visiting some key agricultural American producers and distributors over there, but also understanding their agriculture and how we can better partner as we move forward in putting America first.”
Rollins’s enthusiasm to work with the U.K. comes amid differences between it and the U.S. in agricultural practices, such as preparing chicken. Unlike the United States, which typically stores chicken in vacuum-sealed packages, the U.K. stores chicken in pre-marinated cook-in bags with an aluminum tray.
Cooperation between the two countries could also pave the way for them to respond better to health emergencies, like the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy outbreak in the 1980s and 90s. Most of these cases occurred in the U.K., though six were identified within the U.S.
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Beyond her weeklong U.K. visit, Rollins also spotlighted some of the policies within her department that the Trump administration rolled back, arguing the Biden administration was “singularly focused on not putting farmers first.” Instead, she said that previous leadership focused more on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which ranged from funding projects on transgender men and climate change.
The secretary said that 3,000 contracts and grants focused on “radical left ideology” have been canceled under the Trump administration’s watch. She added that this is one of several things the administration is changing “very, very quickly.”