US Beef Exports to China Cook Up Row As MAGA Roils Brooke Rollins

US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump’s MAGA base following a post on beef exports to China.

In a social media post on X, Rollins lauded President Trump and said China has agreed to move forward on American beef access after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

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The post referred to China’s reported agreement to implement what Rollins termed as beef commitments, including resuming imports from 17 states.

China and the United States have reached a broad agreement on widening agricultural trade through tariff cuts. Reuters reported that Beijing will look into Washington’s concerns on beef facility registration and hassles to poultry exports from certain US states.

“American beef — the best beef in the world! — will be back on the shelves in China soon. They are implementing beef commitments, including resuming imports from 17 states,” Rollins said in the post, which did not go down well with the MAGA backers of Trump.

The China export development was welcomed by the beef industry, which said China has granted a five-year extension to hundreds of US beef plant export registrations, opening access to one of the most important overseas markets for American beef.

But the announcement seems to have angered Trump’s rural supporters, who were miffed earlier by the administration moves to ease beef prices through imports, Rawstory reported.

The beef export announcement also comes after Yahoo Finance reported a spike in the average price of beef in the US. Quoting data from data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it said the average pice now is at a record $6.90 per pound.

Prices have soared 77% since January 2020, when ground beef as priced at $3.89 per pound, it said.

“We just relaxed tariffs on importation of Argentinian beef because the lack of U.S. supply relative to demand was jacking up prices, but now we are going to export the U.S. beef we were told we were short on to China? Make it make sense,” Sean Davis, the co-founder of the conservative magazine The Federalist, posted tagging Rollins. Davis is seen as a leading MAGA mouthpiece.

“How about we focus on having affordable beef on the shelves in, I don’t know, America,” Republican and former congressional candidate, David Giglio, posted.

The Yahoo Finance report has claimed that what it terms as “beeflation” could spark price increases in various products including burgers from popular fast-food chains McDonald’s and Burger King.

Another prominent MAGA voice, Anthony Aguero, a correspondent for the right-wing news network Real America’s Voice, slammed Rollins saying the US is having a beef shortage and hence is importing it from foreign countries “only to give the best beef in the world to China.”

Right wing commentator Wendy Patterson termed Rollins as “The dumbest Secretary in @realDonaldTrump Cabinet.” She alleged that the US agriculture secretary “is also a corporate globalist is excited that the US will now be selling “US Beef to CHINA.”

“The small herds didn’t prevent her from selling American Beef to feed CHINA. Fire her…,” Patterson said in the post.

“How about focusing on making beef affordable….right here in the United States,” another user posted on X.

China has granted ​five-year registration extensions to 425 US beef ‌plants that had been shut after their registrations lapsed last year. Beijing also approved new five-year registrations for 77 additional US facilities, developments that spurred the US Agriculture Secretary’s post that irked the MAGA influencers.

China’s approvals were not expected to result in a surge of exports from the ​US, where supplies are ​tight and prices ⁠are soaring, Reuters reported. “We don’t really have the supply to be exporting right now,” it quoted Austin Schroeder, analyst for commodity advisory firm Brugler Marketing & Management, as saying.