Trump taps America First CEO Rollins as agriculture secretary
AgSec
President-elect Trump announced today he will nominate Brooke Rollins as agriculture secretary.
Rollins served as director of the Office of American Innovation and acting director of the Domestic Policy Council during the first Trump administration.
She then founded the America First Policy Institute, where she now serves as president and CEO.
The AFPI says it “exists to advance policies that put the American people first. Our guiding principles are liberty, free enterprise, national greatness, American military superiority, foreign-policy engagement in the American interest, and the primacy of American workers, families and communities in all we do.”
AFPI has been a prominent adviser to Trump, but has not been prominent in debates about agriculture. It has opposed Chinese ownership of American farmland, The New York Times reported.
If confirmed by the Senate, Rollins would be expected to play a role in the development of Trump’s tariff policies and the impact those tariffs on foreign goods would have on U.S. agricultural exports.
In the first Trump administration, China retaliated against U.S. tariffs on manufactured goods by cutting back on U.S. farm imports and the administration made more than $23 billion in payments to farmers to make up for their losses.
If Rollins and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, are both confirmed, the two Cabinet secretaries would be expected to interact over Kennedy’s criticism of modern agribusiness and his campaign to convince Americans to eat healthier food.
USDA and HHS also are expected to work together to develop the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which offer advice on how people should eat and also determine the foods used in federal government programs from school lunches to military base cafeterias.
Trump’s decision to pick Rollins for ag secretary came as a surprise. On Friday, CNN reported that he was expected to offer the job to former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga.
“Before her tenure in the White House, Ms. Rollins served as president of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential nonprofit that has worked to push public funding to private schools, increase the role of Christianity in civic life and heavily promote fossil fuels,” The New York Times said.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported Trump’s choice of Rollins, noted that she grew up on a farm near Glen Rose, Texas, about 52 miles from Fort Worth.
In a video message for this year’s Ag Women Connect conference, Rollins, 52, noted that she was active in FFA and 4-H. She graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in agriculture development.
According to her Wikipedia biography, Rollins served as the speaker pro tempore of the Student Senate, the chair of the Texas A&M Judicial Court, as a Fish Camp counselor, and was Cotton Bowl Classic queen.
Rollins went on to get a law degree from the University of Texas Law School. She practiced law at Hughes & Luce, LLP in Dallas and clerked under U.S. Federal District Court Judge Barbara M. Lynn.
According to an interview she gave to Texas A&M in 2022, Rollins is married to Mark Rollins, and has four children. The family lives in Fort Worth.
According to his LinkedIn page, Mark Rollins is president and a director of HKN Energy, Ltd, a U.S. independent oil and gas company focused on the Kurdistan region of Iraq. He is also president of Hillwood Energy, a U.S.-focused oil and gas company owned by Ross Perot Jr.
