Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture | All-In DC

Secretary Rollins, thank you for joining me here.

Can you call me Brooke?

Brooke. Okay. I mean, I'm wearing a tie. There's a degree of formality. You just came from a Cabinet meeting today.

I did. Food security is national security.

America is the largest ag exporter in the world. These farmers don't want all these checks.

No one wants a handout.

Exactly. No one wants a handout. $15 billion a year is spent on soda. Should taxpayer dollars be spent on sugary drinks and junk food that's making our kids sick?

Absolutely not.

Does that mean we shut them down?

No, of course not. Part of that was having 300 executive orders drafted, and we did it all very quietly. No one really knew it was happening. We're not here for the people to serve us like some monarchy. We're here to serve the people.

I'm here in Washington DC at the US Department of Agriculture to interview the 33rd Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins. We just had an amazing conversation talking about Brook's background, the work she's doing at the USDA, the impact Doge is having, food stamps, the sentiment of the American farmer, tariff and trade, and everything in between. Really amazing conversation. Thank you to Secretary Rollins for allowing me here today. I hope you'll enjoy the conversation.

All right, besties. I think that was another epic discussion. People love the interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crush your questions in a minute. We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What do you guys think? That was fun.

Brooke, congratulations on your first 100 days.

First 100 days. Yesterday was the 100th day of President Trump's administration, and it feels like 70 days. It was President Trump yesterday, but today we celebrated together at the Cabinet meeting. I'm going back over to the White House right after we finish to do more celebrating.

Great. We appreciate it. The USDA is an incredible agency. It was founded under Abraham Lincoln, I believe. It was established under Lincoln when—I think I was talking to your staff—I think 60% of the American workforce was in agriculture at the time.

That's right.

It's a really critical agency for American prosperity and has been really important for food security and for the interests of America around the world as a trade partner—the largest ag exporter in the world. The agency is incredible in terms of its scale: 29 subagencies, over 100,000 employees, 4,500 locations, and an annual budget of over $200 billion.

Before we get into the USDA and talk a little bit about some of the work you're doing and have been doing, maybe we can talk about your background. Did you grow up on a farm? How did you get into agriculture?

Yes, I grew up in a really small town in Texas. We were not farmers or ranchers per se in Texas. I grew up on a small farm. We raised animals and baled hay. But my mom's side of the family—my grandmother—had a big row-crop farm in Minnesota. So I spent every summer on that farm, growing corn, wheat, soy, pretty much everything you could consider and think of.

That was my row-crop background, which has actually been very helpful. Coming from Texas, I'm more of a cattle raiser and more involved in cattle, which is what I'm in in Texas. It's really great to have both sides of the house, and I'm very appreciative of that.

I grew up in a very small town. We didn't have much. I was raised by a single mom, but we did have the land, and on that land we raised our animals. Again, we baled our hay. I barrel-raced every Friday night. I grew up in 4-H and FFA, went to Texas A&M on an agriculture scholarship, studied soil science and meats and feeds and feeding, and really dove deep into agriculture, knowing I would go to law school.

I really had a heart for understanding policy and the people, but thought I would stay in ag for the rest of my life. Obviously, sometimes the path diverts and changes. Even over the 20 years since I last worked 100% in agriculture—which was for Rick Perry when he was first governor—I quickly moved into all the policy. But I've always stayed very much in touch and involved in ag, and I've always really worked in policy as part of a much broader portfolio until this job.

The USDA is the people's department. That was President Lincoln's vision. The American founding had 4 key agencies: the attorney general, Justice, State, and Defense, which was the Department of War at the time. Interior was added a couple of decades later, and then Agriculture. That was the cadence of building a new government and creating a self-governing structure in which you want the power to remain with the people.

Certainly, as America moved from a frontier republic into the world's greatest economic superpower, you needed some kind of governing structure. Abraham Lincoln, in the 1860s, believed sincerely that the majority of Americans were rural. They were agriculture-related, and they needed representation here in Washington. So the people's department was formed, and this building was built in the early 1900s.

Through the years, as you mentioned, it has grown and grown and grown. I do believe it became a bit of a catch-all in some ways. We run the food stamp program—the SNAP program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. We run the forests, of course; the Forest Service is under USDA. That's tens of thousands of firefighters, as an example.

Of course, we handle everything farming- and agriculture-related, from rural development loans to farm loans to crop insurance, and then all of the economic relief that is often needed. I'm still getting my arms around exactly everything that we're working on here, but in President Trump's greatest vision and bold leadership, one of my top priorities is how we realign the USDA around its original purpose, which was serving the people, and especially the farmers and ranchers. I'm really looking forward to continuing that work.

But you were in the first Trump administration.

I was in the first Trump administration. I think I was the only agriculture major in the building, and I was wearing a lot of different hats. I was working with Jared Kushner in the Office of American Innovation, and then I was doing all the strategy—the big-picture strategy for the president and the policy, especially on the domestic side. Eventually, I ran the domestic policy team, and toward the end I took on Kellyanne Conway's team and some other portfolios.

How did you end up in Trump 1?

That is a really crazy, long story. My entire heart is in public policy. I first thought I might end up at seminary and be a pastor—a youth pastor—and that was where I felt very called after college. But then I realized that if I leaned into public policy—and I didn't know what that meant; I didn't even know what a think tank was—I could perhaps change more and help more people going that route than if I just worked at a church.

I was a big-firm litigator for a couple of years after law school. I did a federal clerkship for a judge in Dallas in the Northern District. Then I got a call from Rick Perry, another big-time Texas Aggie, an Aggie from a rural town, who had just become governor.

In Texas, George W. Bush had just become president. They had the whole hanging-chad controversy. When people think election-integrity issues are new today, they are not new to today. This goes way back.

Rick Perry became governor. He had been lieutenant governor, and he called me while I was sitting there billing every 6 minutes at a big law firm in Dallas. I loved the firm; I didn't love the work. He said, “Why don't you come join my new team down here in Austin?”

I was 28 years old. I'd only been out of law school for a couple of years, and he made me his deputy general counsel. It was shocking to everybody, but I'd known him. I met him when I was 15 as a Future Farmer of America, and he believed in me.

That was really how the pivot happened as I was trying to figure out what was next. I found that in the governor's office it was a great experience. I only did it for 2 years at the very beginning of Rick Perry's administration, but I realized that you could make such a difference.

What I realized was that there was no one at that moment in Texas governance who was lobbying for freedom, liberty, God, and family. All of those people who would come see me every day wanted something, even in Texas—looking for a specific law or wanting a little more taxpayer money. I wasn't even 30 yet, so I was new to all of it, but I was put in a pretty highly responsible area. It was so instructive to me.

I ended up planning to step away from any official work. My husband and I were ready to start a family, and I was going to do that for 20 years and then perhaps think about reentering the workforce, having no idea what that even meant. But I got a call from Wendy Gramm, who was then Senator Phil Gramm's wife and chair of an organization I had never heard of called the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which only had a couple of employees and was based in San Antonio. I was the governor's policy director at the time.

I went from being deputy general counsel to taking on all the policy for Rick Perry. She said, “Would you like to come do this?” I didn’t have any kids at the time, and I thought, “Well, I could do it for a year or two.” I didn’t even know what a think tank was.

But I did know, based on my experience in Rick Perry’s office, that I wasn’t an academic. I’m an Aggie from Texas A&M. I couldn’t have articulated this 20 years ago, but I can now: My instinct was that if there were significant efforts to build a policy apparatus—or apparatuses, I guess—that were strategic and intentional, and that didn’t have clients or get paid to advocate for certain things, we only advocated for what was right. That could change everything in Texas—everything.

I had just been the policy director. I had no one telling me what the right thing to do was; I just had the industry and lobby in my ear. So I thought, “Yeah, let me go do this Texas Public Policy thing for a year or two, and that’ll be fun.” Then I’d really step away once my kids started coming, hopefully.

I looked up 15 years later with 4 kids: Luke, Jake, Anna, and Lily. I was doing flexible work before it was a thing. My board at TPPF was wonderful. We went from 2 employees to about 120 and became, I believe, the most effective public policy organization in the country.

We moved to Texas because I had been in the sausage-making. So I knew I wasn’t, again, an academic; at the time, most think tanks were run by academics. But I understood innately how to stop bad things and how to move good things. That was really the bottom line, and how to hire really, really good people.

I got a call from Jared Kushner, whom I had never met. I had been on then-presidential-candidate Donald Trump’s economic team. I got a call when he was running against Hillary Clinton: “Would you help us just build out our economic, tax, and deregulation plan, et cetera?” I said, “Of course, but I run a nonpartisan think tank.”

I was always happy to help because obviously I thought Donald Trump was going to be more conservative than Hillary, but no one really knew, right? He’d been a Democrat, right, very early, not very long ago. I said, “But yes, if anyone calls and asks for help, I want them to understand the Texas model: what we did in cutting taxes and deregulating, and the job growth that happened and how it helped poor people the most.” That went back to my original idea of going to seminary.

And so he won. I was on that economic team. I was not interested in coming to D.C. or the White House; I told the team that. They said, “What would you like to do? You were on the team when a lot of people weren’t.” And I said, “No, no, no. I’m going to stay in Texas and help.”

Then I got a call from my now very good friend, but then someone I didn’t know, Jared Kushner, who said, “Whatever you’re doing—this is about 6 months into year 1 of term 1—is that thing y’all are doing in Texas, you know, criminal justice reform, deregulation, tax cuts? I mean, whatever, all of the great things you’ve done. Can you just come talk to me about how you did it?”

I flew up to D.C., flew up again, and flew up again. He started saying, “We really need you in the White House. We want you to build something very similar to what you built in Texas: a relentless, super-strategic, very intentional policy apparatus that could move things.” I said no, then I said no again, and then I said no again. Then my family and I finally said yes. That’s how I ended up in the last White House.

And that transitioned into this term. Obviously, you’ve kept in touch with the president.

Well, it’s a much bigger and more interesting story than that, I think.

So, the final year of term 1, I took it upon myself—I sort of anointed myself as the person that would ensure that when President Trump won the second term, we would be ready, unlike in the first term. I spent the year with Larry Kudlow, who ran the National Economic Council; Robert O’Brien, who ran the National Security Council; and I was domestic policy at that point. We really drove an effort to put together an agenda and the teams that would be ready for that second term.

When that didn’t happen and everyone else was discouraged, no one would hire Trump people. It was a very dark time. And then January 6th happened. In November of 2020, I realized that what I had been blessed to build in Texas, what the Trump 1 White House asked me to help do within the West Wing, was what I needed to do on the national scale.

I never thought for a second at that moment that President Trump was going to run again. But the whole idea was that we had just had 4 incredible years, that we had a team of people in the Cabinet and senior staff from Trump 1 who finally not only knew how to talk about conservative issues, but knew how to govern from a free-market, America First perspective. That couldn’t be lost.

If we lost that team, if we lost that thinking, if we lost that know-how, I didn’t know if we’d ever get it back. The Democrats are really good—the left is really good—at government. Our side is really good at raising families and building businesses. This happens every time that we’re put into government: We have a team of people who have the best intentions, but we lose years because we don’t know how to run a bureaucracy, how to deconstruct it, and how to reconstruct it.

And so, in that timeframe—exactly, because that’s it, it’s the timeframe—we launched the America First Policy Institute quietly in early February of 2021 and publicly in April, almost exactly 4 years ago. In April of 2021, I had 9 former Trump Cabinet members from Trump 1 and 50 former White House senior staff. Many were volunteers at the beginning. Eventually, I could raise enough money to get everyone on payroll.

AFPI and then our sister C4, America First Works, became a $90 million operation in just a couple of years, and I think fundamentally transformed the landscape. Part of it was getting ready for a second America First term, whether that was Donald Trump or whomever. Part of it was having 300 executive orders drafted and 196 agency plans ready.

We did it all very quietly. We didn’t talk about it in the press. No one really knew it was happening. That then translated to 7 of our team now being in the Cabinet. Dozens and dozens and dozens are in the White House, along with our other partners, including Stephen Miller. There were just so many of us who were, in a way, in solidarity in those early days, not knowing that we would be back, but knowing that, if given the opportunity, we would answer the call again.

Now you’re in the Cabinet, and you’re running the Department of Agriculture. It’s been 70-some-odd days, 100 days for the president. How have the first 100 days gone? What have been the highlights for you in starting this term out?

Everyone says, “Are you exhausted?” It’s a 7-day-a-week, 20-hours-a-day effort. For me, there are days where I’m tired of me. I think I got here to D.C. I was doing tours all day yesterday with Secretary Kennedy. The day before, I was in Ohio—I think that’s right. Yes. Two days before that, I was in North Dakota. Then I’m back here.

It’s literally a 5:00 a.m. to midnight, 7-days-a-week effort, but it’s just such a gift. I mean, who gets to do this? At an inflection point in our country’s history, I feel like this is 1776 all over again.

I would never, ever compare myself to the Founding Fathers, but those guys were farmers and teachers and businessmen before they declared independence from the greatest power the world had ever known, and that was Great Britain and the king. In many ways, I feel like our Cabinet and this president have God’s hand, and that’s what we are called to do as well.

While certainly we’re working very hard and the 100 days have been extremely fast-paced, I think that’s why you see the joy in the work: We’re ready for it.

Some of the secretaries in the Cabinet have talked about the need to deconstruct, tear down, rebuild, or in some cases completely dismantle, the department that they’re overseeing. What’s your mandate with Agriculture? Is there a reform needed in Agriculture, like others have declared for their departments? Does it need to be rebuilt from the ground up? Does it need to be rethought, or does Agriculture work well and in the best interest of America? What’s your general take and your general mandate on the Department of Agriculture?

Yeah, well, I think when you say, “Does Agriculture work well?” I think you mean USDA. The fact that we have an agency with 100,000-plus employees, and the largest budget item is food stamps, the SNAP program—there are so many different divisions and contracts.

We are just getting started. We’ve already canceled almost $6 billion—$100,000, $200,000 at a time. That’s a significant amount of contracts that we’re canceling. We are conducting reductions in force to make sure that we are as efficient, as effective, and as flexible as possible.

There is no doubt that USDA absolutely needs a realignment, a reconstruction, and a significant reorganization. That’s what we are working through right now.

The idea that USDA should be—we’ve got other programs, and those are important, like food stamps, although they need significant reform—but this agency should be about farmers and ranchers all day, every day, and our ag producers.

Every year we lose more family farms, every year things get outsourced to other countries including China and Brazil.

Every year, it gets harder and harder for most of our farmers to make a living where they can support their family and pass their fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-generation farm or ranch on to their sons or daughters. It's getting harder and harder. It's also getting harder and harder for new Americans, men or women, to get into the business of farming. It's almost impossible. There's not enough opportunity for capital to buy a new tractor, buy the land, and figure out how to become part of this great historical legacy profession in American history.

We've got a lot of things here at the department we need to really, really be refocused on, and we are. But also, there are some massive policy questions that we've got to think through. The final big priority is that these farmers don't want all these checks. They take them because it's the way they stay in the black and the way they keep farming. It's a national security issue because we lose more farms and buy more food from overseas. That's not good for the country for a lot of reasons.

At the same time, they would like to be able to sell their product at a profit and not have to worry about the government, right? At the end of the day, these are all big policy questions. Hopefully, we expand markets. The president's realigning the entire world economy right now, putting America first. All of those things combined, I believe, will lead us into a new era of prosperity where we can hopefully solve most of that.

I think they're all really good targets—obviously tactically challenging. But can we start with SNAP real quick? It's 70% of your budget. It is $123 billion a year. Just to create some context, 13% of Americans are on the food stamp, the SNAP program, at $123 billion a year. That's roughly, call it, 2% of America's federal budget going toward the food stamp program.

One key policy point that's come up lately is that roughly 10%, or $15 billion a year, is spent on soda. And 75% of the population on SNAP is clinically obese. There's a real health concern about the SNAP program continuing to fuel a health crisis in America. What have you, in partnership with Secretary Kennedy, talked about with regard to addressing the health challenges that arise from the way the SNAP program operates today?

That's been a pretty big priority of ours. Within the first hour of being sworn in on February 13th, 50 letters went out to all 50 governors in the country. In those letters, we talked about SNAP and innovation: Send me your waivers, because the way the program works, it moves through the states. I love that anyway. Why would the federal government be telling everyone what to do? In the founders' best vision of the 10th Amendment, we want to allow the states to build those programs.

Within that was the question: Why are billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on sugary drinks and junk food to go into our Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for our food-insecure populations, our lower-income populations, when, to your point, the backside is an obesity and chronic-disease epidemic unlike anything any developed country in the history of the world has ever seen? Seventy-four percent of our adolescents—our teenagers—would not pass the military readiness test of the United States military right now, today. Seventy-five percent.

Again, talk about national security, talk about all of the things. This is a massive, massive challenge facing America. In the first administration, health care was under my portfolio in domestic policy. As conservatives, we've long talked about how we make America healthy again, but very much from a numbers perspective—the cost to the health care system at the back end of this. It's not just the taxpayers funding it at the front end with the junk food, sugary drinks, and diabetes. It's really stunning what's happened just in the last couple of decades.

On the back end, the cost to our health care system of treating those chronic diseases is going to bankrupt our country. It's almost bankrupting all the states right now through Medicaid. So, how do we solve for that? Enter Bobby Kennedy. Bobby and I don't agree on everything, but we do agree on most things. The opportunity for the agriculture lead and the health lead to work daily, hand in hand, to solve this together is enormous. I was just with him yesterday touring some farms and talking about nutrition and agriculture all day.

You can't solve this through government regulation. You just can't. But you solve it through nutrition, through empowering your farmers, and through getting good food into these programs versus ultra-processed food. We've all heard Bobby use these points, and he couldn't be more right.

And again, talk about realigning the world economy with the president's vision of tariffs. It's also realigning how we look at food and how we, as a federal government, approach SNAP and other food programs. We have 13 nutrition programs. Listen to this number. This is going to astound you: In America today, through USDA—not all the other agencies, just here at USDA—we spend $370 million a day on nutrition programs. Not just SNAP, but food banks and all of the other ones. That's just USDA. That is a stunning number. We've got to do better. That's a big part of it. Secretary Kennedy and I are on this. We are so aligned. We've got the dietary guidelines we're doing right now.

What shows up in D.C. as you guys try and make this move? There's a lot of money at stake.

Just to paint the picture, about a quarter of a percent of federal spending is going toward buying soda. What happens as you guys try and make these sorts of reforms? Who shows up, and what do they try and do?

I will talk about it. I will also say that those who represent those industries are good people who are raising their families. I do believe their talking point is freedom: Why should someone at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder not be able to buy the same things you and I could buy?

Of course, my answer is, well, we're not using taxpayer dollars, so that's a big difference. And we're not paying for it on the back end. But I understand where they would potentially be coming from. The amount of money that's at stake is reflected in the amount of lobbyists who are out and about and certainly very much a part of the Washington, D.C., establishment.

But it goes directly to why, as difficult and as challenging as these policy issues are for all of us in President Trump's Cabinet, reflecting today on the 100th-day celebration, it's also so different because none of us are of Washington. That was true in the first term, and that's why I felt so free. I could just do what was right. He said, “Go do what's right.”

But in the first term, we didn't really know yet how to do it, what we were doing, or who was on our side. That 4-year pause in between term 1 and term 2 was the greatest gift. Not only could we plan, but we also fully understood who was in it to save the country and what we needed to do to get this done.

For me, this is so black and white, and I've told everyone this: I don't need to listen to 57 meetings with lobbyists representing the industry. This is black and white. Taxpayer dollars being spent on sugary drinks and junk food that's making our kids sick? Absolutely not. Does that mean we shut them down? No, of course not. It just means we realign and spend the dollars where they need to be spent. We reform, and hopefully we make America healthy again.

I think this is one of the most important points about this administration. Without having all the political insiders in the administration, there's no political leverage that can be applied, and you can have a true, objective, first-principles point of view on policy, which seems not to have been the case for a very long time in the United States.

Going back to the point about the Founding Fathers and that era of America, these were folks who ran farms and businesses. They came and provided their time as civil servants for a period, and then they left and went back to private sector.

That's right. In government today, that's exactly right on both sides. This is not a party thing. It's just an entire industry that has been built around this. This is the problem when the government gets too big. This is world history: Greece, Rome, Spain, France. Every great world power has buckled under the weight of a government that hands out the largesse, where everyone's got their hand in the pot, and they buckle. That's how they lose their place in the world.

I sincerely believe that without Donald Trump coming down that escalator—and listen, there were 17 guys and 1 girl running in 2015 when he did that—I was not the smart one who said, “Oh, there's the game changer. That's him.” I was like, “Oh, I love that person. I've known him forever, and they're going to be so great. It's not going to be Donald Trump.”

But at that moment in American history, without that human being who is literally willing to swing for the fences every single day, 100 times a day, for the American people, who owes no lobbyist one thing, we were all hired with the idea that we owe industry and lobbyists not one thing.

Now, we need to listen to their concerns, but every day, all day, we're called to do what's right. I don't know that that's ever happened, at least in my lifetime, in federal governance.

So, I want to talk about the irony of running the USDA with your policy background. This is an organization that administers programs like SNAP.

Yes.

The federal crop insurance program, the direct payments program to farmers, commodity price support, where the federal government—the USDA—is buying commodities to keep prices high. Coming from a free-market background, a background of maximizing liberties, and a belief that wasteful government spending needs to be eliminated, how do you reconcile the irony of running this department? How do you think about where you want to take this department over time with that background?

Yeah, this is great. You're the first person to really dig down on this that I've talked to since I took the job, and it's an extremely insightful and thoughtful question that you raised, because that's 100% true.

My entire background is how to get government out of people's lives, how to get government “handouts” out of the private sector, how to significantly downsize everything that the government stands for, and how to let the markets work. I think two things. First, I have become an absolute, avid believer in President Trump's vision of putting America first.

For years, I thought that cheaper goods from China were good for everybody, and that they allowed those at the bottom of the economic ladder to have a better quality of life. This was the market at work. Now that I've seen it in the first term, but especially as the agriculture secretary, realizing how poorly our products are treated on the world stage, the tariff treatment—it just is stunning to me that we let this go on for so long.

The way Argentina treats our beef, the way China treats our products, the way Brazil treats our corn, and the way the UK treats our pork—and that's just in my world. I haven't even really studied the automakers and others. There is no doubt that that realignment has to happen for America to continue to thrive and lead on the world stage for another 250 years.

That's the first thing: really realigning my thinking after deep study and deep thought in his approach of America first—not free markets for the sake of free markets, but fair markets for the sake of America. Get parity first, with the goal of freer markets eventually.

The second thing I will say, more on the USDA side, is that food security is national security. We have already lost tens of thousands of family farms in the last decade. If we continue on that trajectory, America will not be able to feed ourselves. The minute you become unable to feed yourself is the minute you lose all power on the world stage.

The minute you have to rely on China, Brazil, or Argentina to feed your people, you're done. What has happened over the last number of years is that China has been buying up a lot of our farmland in America. A lot of our major meatpackers are now owned by foreign entities.

I'm not going to cast aspersions on everybody, but at the end of the day, we have to make sure that our agriculture industry is here in this country, that we are feeding ourselves, and that we're relying on ourselves. All of the programs that you just outlined are part of that effort.

We lose our farmers and our ranchers, we lose America—not just the diligence, the hard work, and the discipline that come with what I believe is the most righteous of all professions. The beginning of our country was fought by farmers. We also lose it from a national security perspective. When that happens, we lose everything.

Let's talk about farming and the farmer. Today, there are 2 million Americans who work directly in agriculture across, I believe, 1.8 million farms in the United States. China has historically bought $36 billion a year of American agricultural products. America is the largest exporter in the world, so our farmers are deeply dependent on trade.

That's right.

In California today, farmers have declared that there's a 20% labor shortage. Meanwhile, there's a massive effort to address illegal immigration in the United States. I want to hear your view on the ground. You've visited, I think you said, 15 states since you've been in office and met hundreds of farmers. What's the state of mind of the American farmer today? What are they feeling? What are they worried about? What are you hearing?

The first three things on that. The first is that, almost to a farmer, they are so supportive of President Trump, even understanding that this current trade renegotiation hurts and that they aren't going to be able to survive that long. But they know that the president has their back, and that's been really encouraging to me.

I've made a huge effort to get out into the country, meet the farmers, continue to shake hands, and say, “We're with you.” In the long run, this is going to be so good for our agriculture industry. Under Joe Biden, we lost $50 billion in trade. We went from a $0 trade deficit with Trump 1 to a $50 billion trade deficit with Biden, and that's $50 billion almost directly out of our farmers' pockets.

The short term hurts, but the president is with them. Secondly, to your point, there are tremendous headwinds, whether it's the trade renegotiation, row crops having the thinnest margins they've ever had in their lifetimes, or the fact that we export so many of those row crops. That's almost a double whammy.

The president's vision of a disruptive restructuring of the American economy includes shipbuilding, so for a lot of the exporters that need that extra fee on top of that, it's just one more issue. Jamieson Greer and the team have been great. They've been solving for that and ensuring that agriculture is at the table, and that every day and in every decision they're making, they're doing that.

Ultimately—and this has been a big part of what I've been talking to the farmers about—we have to ensure that we're opening up those new markets. Whether it's India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Peru, or the UK, I am going to all of those countries in the next few months. This is just me on behalf of agriculture. This isn't our trade crew or our commerce secretary. It's just me.

I feel so bullish on the idea that if we're on Trump time and deploy Trump time—which is going as fast as you can, as hard as you can, for as long as you can, around the world—we're going to open up so many new markets for our farmers. Then we solve for the labor issue, which you brought up, which is a really big issue.

I think sometimes Californians tend to inflate that.

What are you trying to say?

Yeah, I know. They think a little bit differently.

I hear it in Florida, too.

Well, there's no doubt. I'll give you one statistic from a large strawberry farmer. I work in strawberries as well as other crops. The farmer mentioned that he did an analysis: since pre-COVID days, the total labor cost in the strawberry industry has grown from $700 million a year to $2 billion a year.

Wow. That's really hurt margins. It's really hard to net a profit, particularly in specialty crops—not row crops, where everything's automated, but specialty crops, where you're dependent on labor doing work in the field and harvesting product. You have to be able to keep up with the lack of labor.

Of late, there's been an exodus of immigrants out of that sector who might qualify under the visa program. I don't know whether the department is active or spending resources on that.

I'll put a little note on what you just said, and that is: I'm a Texan, and our South Texas citrus farmers down there have Mexico, for some of them, half a mile away. They can see it right across the border, now through the wall, but they can see it. It's $2 an hour. Those farmers are paying $2 an hour over there. You come across on our side, and with everything that we're required to do and pay, it's $20 to $23 an hour.

How do you compete? You're growing the same crops. You can't.

Our dairy farmers—the visa programs don't work for them. It's not a seasonal deal. Those cows have to be milked 365 days a year. They can't find people to milk the cows.

The president, not in today's Cabinet meeting but in the last one a couple of weeks ago, brought this up himself. He and I talked about it in the first term, and we've talked about it since then. He understands that there is a massive labor challenge for our farmers and ranchers, especially our farmers in this country, but our ranchers as well.

He himself said that those who are not here legally need to go back. They need to self-deport, but we will ensure that there's some sort of program in place to help make sure that our farmers on this side have the labor that they need.

The details of that are being worked out. I can't really talk much about it, but the fact that the president himself is focused on that should give our farmers a lot of encouragement that help—literally, figuratively, and metaphorically—is on the way.

Got it. I think that's a key thing for farmers to hear. From what I hear from folks in the industry, it's something that they want to make sure is acknowledged and addressed. Agriculture is such an interesting market.

There's such an alignment with some of these conservative values that you and this administration espouse, but then there's such an important role that government actually plays.

That's exactly right. At this point, you couldn't—it's, you know, I love Elon and love DOGE, and they've been such a good partner in helping us get rid of the $500,000 grant to study transgender menstruation cycles in men and the craziness. He's been wonderful. But agriculture, in many ways, is different. You can't come in here and gut the crop insurance program. You will lose thousands of farmers, and guess who swoops in and picks up their land and their operation? The Chinese. You just can't do it.

Now, my goal and my fervent prayer is that, 4 years from now, we will have moved, we will have opened up the markets, and we'll have reached this new era of prosperity for our farmers and our ranchers. In so doing, this should be the goal of every government program: that we're able to roll a lot of that back and that we don't need it as much, so the budget can come down over time.

Exactly. Yes. That's the goal. The same with food stamps. Talk about 80% of the USDA budget being food stamps. Our goal needs to be moving people into a life of work filled with dignity, where they don't need those programs anymore, versus the last administration trying to get as many people into those programs as possible. Our goal is to move them off those programs because they have a good, well-paying job and they don't need them anymore.

No one wants a handout.

Exactly. No one wants a handout. I think that's what a lot of people don't understand, and effectuating that is really important.

Yeah. I guess maybe you can share a little bit of the anecdotes. What's it been like with the DOGE representatives that have come into the department? Are they embedded? Are they long-term? Do you believe that DOGE plays—as an institution, forgetting Elon—a long-term role in continuously improving and identifying opportunities for cost savings?

1,000%. It's like all my dreams have come true. I'll never forget when the president came down the escalator in 2015 and was talking about how, for every 1 new regulation, we're going to get rid of 2. I thought, "Are you kidding me? For the first time, are we making deregulation fun and sexy?" I've been talking about this in Texas, and no one wanted to talk about it. Even Republicans were like, "Oh, we can never get rid of it. Once government's there, we just have to make it better."

Donald Trump, 10 years ago, started talking about it and made it a thing. The first year of Trump 1, for every 1 new regulation, 22 went away. The next year, it was 17. The next year, 13, I think. By the end, because it got a little bit harder to find them, it still wasn't 2 to 1. Our average was about 10 to 1 in the first Trump administration.

Then you add on Elon Musk and his team of geniuses, who normally would never even think about being in government. Not that they wouldn't want to, but they wouldn't even begin to know how. You combine that with this idea that we're returning power to the people, we're downsizing government, and we are not in charge. We're not here for the people to serve us like some monarchy; we're here to serve the people. That's a fundamental shift in the way we're thinking in the federal government.

And then, to add Elon on—so actually, right after our Cabinet meeting, maybe right before, a couple of hours ago, I guess the news reports were saying, "Oh, he's headed back to do his business." I pulled him aside and said, "I hope this isn't true. This country needs you and your team forever." To see the states now begin to add their own DOGEs, this is how we save America. This is how we protect the country. Hopefully, that becomes the institution. It becomes institutionalized.

Exactly. Hopefully, we make it so powerful and get the people so involved that even the Democrats can't roll it back—that this is the long-term plan for the country.

For your department, there's a big farm bill negotiation coming up. I've been in D.C. a couple of times for farm bills. I'll give an anecdote: I'll go in, have a conversation with someone on a committee or in an office, and they're like, "Well, I can get this thing, but we've got to go give the other guys this thing." It clearly becomes this bill that today, I think, is rated at $1.5 trillion over whatever the budgeting period is. It's one of the largest bills we pass, and the SNAP program is in it, so it serves the House of Representatives' interests. Then all the farm programs are in it, so it serves the Senate's interests, because the Senate is heavily influenced by rural states and agriculture. It's become this behemoth bill.

How do you view—are you going to play a role in—and how do you view this kind of horse trading that needs to go on to ultimately reduce government inefficiency and spending on things that don't necessarily make sense as we get into this farm bill negotiation in the next couple of months?

I am encouraged that the Biden team couldn't get it done. I know a lot of people hate it, and they should, because it does become a Christmas tree of sorts. But the reference prices, which are what our farmers are paid on, have not been changed since the last farm bill, which was at the beginning of Trump 1.

Debbie Stabenow, who's now gone, was the lead Democrat in the Senate. The Senate was leading. Of course, Joe Biden wasn't—that team was sort of missing in action. We've got a different team on the ground now. One of the very first conversations I had with Amy Klobuchar, who took Debbie Stabenow's place as the lead Democrat—of course, now we're running the Senate, so it's a little bit different—was, "How do we get this done?"

But realizing that the SNAP program, which is what the Democrats are always trying to put more money into, grew 40% under the Joe Biden term—40%. The program that was already this gigantic, with huge amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse, is now even more. They did that on purpose, right? They knew it would be hard for us to roll that back.

I'm underscoring your point that this is not going to be easy. The farmer part of the farm bill is 15%. The food stamp part of the farm bill is 85%. I have been thinking about this already, having conversations and strategy sessions on both sides of the aisle. Frankly, we've got to get this done for our farmers.

Even, to Senator Klobuchar's credit, and other Senate Democrats on the Agriculture Committee, they care as much about the farmer in their states as I believe most of the Republicans do. Agriculture is the number-one industry in almost every state. Trying to find that middle ground, while ensuring that we're bringing real reform to the SNAP program and, most importantly, supporting our farmers and our ranchers, will continue to be the driver.

As in all things, I think Donald Trump is the game changer here, and I think he's going to help us get this done.

I want to talk about one last point before we wrap, which is innovation in food generally speaking and how it relates to protecting farmers' interests. There's been a lot of investment in cellular agriculture—using cells to make milk, eggs, cheese, fish, or chicken—using new biotechnologies.

DeSantis went onstage with a couple of ranchers from Florida, and they passed a law banning the sale or production of cellular agriculture products in the state. There are 2 other states that have passed laws, and others that are considering it. Now there's a conversation about some folks in the House doing it as well.

The general statement is that there's already a regulatory framework for making sure it's safe for consumers, making sure it's healthy, and so on. Some people might not like it, but I go back to my free-market principles: Why not let consumers choose? As long as it's safe and appropriately regulated, shouldn't it be made available rather than protecting the interests of a particular industry? Otherwise, you end up looking like Europe, and Europe has stifled innovation in agriculture for decades. As a result, they've fallen way behind America, and it's an opportunity for America to sustain its innovative advantage.

Have you spent any time on this topic, and do you have a point of view?

I have not dug into this yet the amount that I need to. Having said that, I do believe that innovation and the drive for better should never be stifled. I sincerely believe that there is hopefully room for everyone, especially as this emerging market is happening.

I also believe that, at the end of the day, when most American consumers have to decide between real American beef and something that's not, they're going to choose the real American beef. In my nominal knowledge at this point, without digging in, I just believe so strongly in our ranchers and our farmers, what they produce, and what it means to the average American family. I'm the mom of 4, and I think about how I feed my family.

But I don't think we ever want to get in the way of stifling innovation, especially as it relates to something that could eventually be such a game changer.

Brooke, I really appreciate all the time you've given us—given me—today. It's really great to spend this hour with you. Congrats on the role, congrats on the progress, and I really look forward to seeing the work you're going to be doing over the years ahead.

Thank you. It's an honor to do it. Thank you.

Thank you.