WASHINGTON — Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday distanced herself from President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement last week that he had reached a deal with still-unnamed countries to ramp up beef imports.

Trump on Friday announced a plan to temporarily allow more tariff-free foreign beef into the United States in an effort to bring down prices. But it was immediately met with pushback from America’s beef sector and its congressional champions, including Montana GOP Sen. Tim Sheehy, a close Trump ally, and others.

When pressed by reporters at the White House, Rollins also did not directly address concerns from some Republican lawmakers who represent beef-producing states.

A top concern the GOP lawmakers and ranching officials have expressed was that cheaper foreign-produced beef would force down prices of American ground beef and other cattle-based products. And that would leave U.S. beef ranches with fewer profits to spend on efforts to grow the size of the American beef herd.

“For the short term, the president felt very convicted that as American consumers are paying more for beef — not our fault, our administration’s fault — but as they are, that short temporary fix was important,” Rollins told reporters outside the West Wing after a television interview.

Americans consume around 13 million metric tons of beef per year, with 11 million metric tons coming from U.S.-raised cattle, she said. The remainder is imported, and Rollins called that yearly need “nothing unusual.” But she, like Trump, blamed the Biden administration for allowing the American herd to shrink, making it unable to supply its typical amount of beef to domestic consumers.

“So that’s why when the president announced, I think it even said in his (Truth Social post) on Friday morning, specific to ground beef, he is working to fill a gap, a pretty big gap in the supply chain from ground beef,” she said.

Amid pushback from GOP ranch-state lawmakers, Rollins said Trump’s “long-term fight” was to “open up more grazing land to ensure that our ranchers have what they need to build their herd to make sure that we’ve got a stable market.”

But when reporters asked which beef-exporting countries, other than Mexico, had agreed to send more beef products to the United States, Rollins passed the political fork to Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

“I am not privy to talk about that,” she said. “I think the conversations are still going on. And that’s Ambassador Greer, who’s finalizing what exactly that looks like, and I think the president’s involved in that, as well.”

No other countries have announced they reached an agreement with the president to supply the U.S. market with more beef products. The agriculture secretary said she was not involved in any such talks, which she suggested were ongoing.

“You know, (Trump) and I have talked a lot about this for a very very long time. I have not talked to him specifically about this specific announcement and what that looks like,” Rollins said. “But I do know he’s working very, very closely with Jamieson Greer on it.”

Late Friday afternoon, as he was departing Washington for a political rally in South Carolina for GOP Sen. Darline Graham, Trump was noticeably tight-lipped about his new beef partners.

“I don’t wanna say which countries,” he told reporters under a wing of a jumbo jet gifted to him by Qatar that he is using as Air Force One. “But there are a few countries. But they’re going to be sending in the highest-quality beef, and it’s something that we need.”

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