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# Rollins at USDA: A Study in Contradictory Signals
There are two narratives currently emanating from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and my job is to scrutinize the numbers to see which, if any, holds up. The first narrative is one of crisis. The second is one of a looming "golden age." The problem is that both are being delivered by the same person, Secretary Brooke Rollins, often in the same breath. And the data supporting them is, to put it mildly, inconsistent.
The crisis narrative is immediate and quantifiable. On September 28, the Trump administration transferred $13 billion from the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation to fund an emergency aid package for farmers. The reason is straightforward: commodity prices are low, and producers are struggling. Yet, the terms and even the exact size of this crucial package remain undefined. According to Rollins, speaking at a recent cabinet meeting, the aid is effectively frozen. “We’ve got to get the government reopened so that we can move forward on that,” she stated. Farmer aid held up until shutdown ends, Rollins says.
This presents the first significant data discrepancy. A $13 billion hole in the farm economy is not a rounding error; it’s a systemic shock. Yet, the official messaging places the blame on two divergent sources. First, Rollins and President Trump point to the “slew of issues” inherited from the previous Biden administration. Second, Rollins quietly alludes to the real-time variable: China’s pullback from purchasing U.S. commodities, a direct consequence of the administration's own tariff strategy. This is where the narrative begins to fray. It’s like a company CEO announcing a massive quarterly loss, blaming the previous management team while also admitting his new flagship product has alienated his biggest customer. Both can’t be the primary cause.
And this is the part of the report that I find genuinely puzzling. The administration is framing a political stalemate—the government shutdown—as the sole impediment to delivering aid for an economic crisis it helped precipitate. Is the operational capacity of the USDA truly at zero during a shutdown? Or is the aid being held as a point of leverage in a larger political negotiation? The data on that is, of course, unavailable. But the effect is the same: capital allocated for relief is not being deployed, and the official explanation feels incomplete.
The Deregulation Panacea
While farmers wait for emergency funds, Secretary Rollins is busy articulating the second, more aspirational narrative. This is the "golden age for our farmers and rural America," a future of "rural prosperity" unshackled from the "hamster wheel of government." The primary vehicle for this transformation appears to be aggressive deregulation, and the flagship policy is the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule.
On August 27, the USDA announced it was opening a public comment period for a proposal to scrap the rule, which currently restricts road construction and other development on nearly 60 million acres of national forest land. The stated rationale is to empower local land managers, prevent devastating wildfires, and remove "burdensome, outdated, one-size-fits-all regulations." The proposal would apply to about 75% of that land—to be more exact, nearly 45 million acres. Secretary Rollins Opens Next Step in the Roadless Rule Rescission.
This move is presented as a long-term solution to systemic economic issues. The logic, as articulated by Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, is that the rule has been a "barrier to action," preventing the active forest management needed to combat overgrowth and fire risk. By removing it, the administration argues it will unlock economic growth and create healthier, more productive forests.
This is a massive policy shift with generational consequences. It’s also being executed with remarkable speed. The public comment period, a critical window for stakeholder input on a rule affecting an area of land larger than the state of Washington, was scheduled to last just over three weeks (from August 29 to September 19, 2025). I've looked at hundreds of these federal rulemaking processes, and such a compressed timeline for a policy of this magnitude is, at a minimum, an outlier. It suggests a strong desire to finalize the action with little friction.
But the core question remains: how does this solve the immediate problem? The administration is offering a long-term, speculative fix—the potential, unquantified economic upside of opening up roadless areas—as the counter-narrative to a short-term, acute cash crisis in the heartland. What is the net present value of rescinding the Roadless Rule, and how does it compare to the $13 billion in aid currently sitting in a locked account? We are being sold a vision of future prosperity while the house is on fire.
A Policy of Cognitive Dissonance
When you strip away the rhetoric, the USDA's current posture is a case study in cognitive dissonance. The department is simultaneously managing a bailout and promising a boom. It blames past administrations for a sluggish farm economy while its own trade policies choke off major export markets. It holds up a government shutdown as the barrier to releasing billions in emergency aid, making farmers collateral damage in a political war.
The two narratives—crisis and golden age—are not just contradictory; they are operationally at odds. The administration's solution to the "hamster wheel of government" is a massive, top-down deregulatory push that may or may not yield economic benefits years from now. Its solution to the immediate cash-flow crisis facing its key rural constituency is… to wait. The numbers on the balance sheet don't align with the soaring language of the press releases. One is a measure of reality; the other is a measure of aspiration. Right now, reality is losing.
Tags: brooke rollins