Editor’s View: Why is US ag secretary back in the UK with Trump?
Brooke Rollins © Associated Press/Alamy Stock Photo Last Saturday (13 September), new Defra secretary Emma Reynolds remarked on social media she had made her third trip of the year to Whipsnade Zoo, home to exotic animals from around the world including the Amur tiger.
But it was a sharp-clawed predator of a very different kind that confronted her on the steps of 10 Downing Street just four days later: US secretary of agriculture Brooke Rollins.
And this time, there was no fence for protection.
See also: Rollins calls UK-US ethanol deal a ‘win-win’
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This is the state of permanent whiplash a new secretary of state moves in – a blur of events and speeches intended for your predecessor into which you have been thrust at a moment’s notice.
Ms Rollins, who has been in post for a whole seven months, was in the UK for the second time in four months as she accompanied president Donald Trump on his historic second state visit, which included a lavish banquet at Windsor Castle.
The invitation, proffered by prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, was a decent attempt to extract preferential treatment in the US-UK trade deal from Trump, a man with a limitless appetite for pomp and ceremony.
Still, it was galling this week to see Ms Rollins use her social media to trumpet the success of the concessions made by the UK on bioethanol tariffs back to farmers in the US even as her Texan feet were still on British soil.
Especially as the much hoped-for 0% tariff on UK steel going into the US, which was meant to be one of the main justifications for giveaways elsewhere, now appears to not be forthcoming.
It will instead be staying at 25% – better than the 50% paid by many other countries, but still damaging.
As we went to press on Wednesday 17 September, there were no reports that Ms Rollins had got her teeth into Ms Reynolds or the new trade secretary, Peter Kyle, to extract more concessions on agricultural trade.
The NFU and Dairy UK, the milk buyers’ membership group, were jittery about reports that US negotiators have been pressing for more access for their dairy products.
Hopefully, it will turn out to be nothing, but it was surprising to see Ms Rollins accompanying the president on his trip when agriculture had not been touted as part of the package of announcements in the run-up to his arrival.
It may simply be that she wants a victory lap for bioethanol exports, amid the increasing domestic pressure from farmers in her own backyard, to stem the losses they are suffering as part of Trump’s trade war with China.
So, as president Trump and prime minster Starmer tucked into the best of British cuisine at the banquet, perhaps the conversation turned to the UK producers who put it there, and their difficulties with keeping farmers on both sides of the pond happy.
With any luck, they’ll come to the same conclusion that the rest of us came to some time ago.
It’s time to stop making policy that threatens to put some farmers in the same endangered category as some of Whipsnade’s lesser known residents.