Sen. Elissa Slotkin impresses early in ag committee

New U.S. senator tells agriculture secretary nominee her first loyalty should always be to the farmers.

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Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan, is a new member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan, is a new member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
Courtesy Sen. Elissa Slotkin

Any time there is a federal election there is a change in membership in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

With that comes a change in committee memberships, including the agriculture committees. That isn’t always good. Do the new members understand agriculture and support its industries? Will they be willing to put their constituents in the industry ahead of their party affiliation? You just never know.

Having just watched part of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry’s nomination hearing for U.S. agriculture secretary hopeful Brooke Rollins, I can tell that one of the committee’s newest members left me feeling confident she had the farmers in mind.

After serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for six years, Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan, will serve the next six years in the U.S. Senate. She succeeds Sen. Debbie Stabenow, also a Democrat.

She also succeeds Stabenow on the agriculture committee, of which Stabenow served as chairperson before retiring from public office. And while in my opinion, Stabenow didn’t always put the interests of agriculture ahead of the interests of her political party, it appears that Slotkin doesn’t want to be that way.

Nor does she want Rollins to be that way, should Rollins be confirmed.

Tariff talk

Also on Slotkin’s resume is work as a former Pentagon official and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer.

Through that work, Slotkin said she had the belief that “food security is national security, and the United States should always be able to feed itself by itself.”

But Slotkin said food security could be at risk, depending on how talks of tariffs materialize. She wanted to make sure that Rollins understood that.

“I just want to review the bidding to make sure, particularly with your agency, that we’re all on the same page on what happened last time President (Donald) Trump announced 25% tariffs on Chinese products,” she said.

“I certainly understand the instinct as a CIA officer, right? I want to push back on China. China retaliated and put 25% tariffs on soybeans, fruits, pork and some other items. Then we got into a trade war. … We started adding more things to the list. They started adding more things to the list. It went on and on and on and back and forth. Suddenly, our farmers across the country are screaming bloody murder because the markets that they used to have access to (were closed). No one wanted to buy our stuff because it had that 25% tariff. We felt that very acutely.”

The way the federal government handled the situation during the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2021 was far from ideal, Slotkin said, and if that approach is used again, it could harm producers subjected to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) or other animal diseases.

At that time, the USDA “raided” the Commodity Credit Corporation account to give subsidies to farmers hurt by those tariffs.

“We paid them off, and everyone here has said no farmer wants a subsidy. They want to work. They want to get paid a fair rate for their crop. That emergency fund is the same fund that helps us with things like avian flu that we’re now dealing with all over the country. So you can imagine, as a Michigander, the throwing around of tariffs … I’m trepidatious that this is going to come back to our farmers,” Slotkin said.

Slotkin reminded Rollins that if confirmed, she will swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States, and not to Trump.

Slotkin asked “So, can you say … that you will throw your body in front of the bus to make sure that any political talking point on tariffs that may sound good is actually truly tested against how it will impact our farmers, like it was not last time around?”

Rollins gave an answer that may best be described as somewhere between affirmative and ambiguous.

“My commitment is that there is no sleeping, that we will work around the clock to ensure that our ag communities across this country are represented in those discussions and at the table, and I will do everything in my power to elevate, preserve, honor, conserve that backbone of America,” Rollins said.

Slotkin told Rollins that her good relationship with Trump is a “value add,” and she should use that relationship to help farmers and not just make political talking points.

“We all want to punch back on China, most of us, but it’s got to fit reality here and not end up boomeranging on us like it did the last time,” Slotkin said.

Avian influenza

Slotkin said she was concerned about the current HPAI outbreak that has infected not only poultry and other birds, but also cattle, cats and humans.

Michigan has had two cases of HPAI in commercial poultry flocks in 2025 and in 2024 it had 11. The state has also had dairy herds infected.

Slotkin said she thought Michigan “has gotten decently high marks for handling it well,” because Michigan farmers have cooperated well with the federal government. But she worried some people in other states may not be so willing to cooperate.

Slotkin said: “You are going to have to be the federal government, having to put some muscle behind some of our rules so that we don’t see the spread, right? Tell us what you’re going to do in the federal government role that you’re about to take to make sure that we stem the spread of avian flu, even with the states and farmers who are not so friendly with the federal government.”

Rollins touted her depth of experience in working with state governments and state agriculture commissioners, and said if confirmed, she will continue to work closely with them, as well as the greater stakeholder community.

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