After Trump’s Election, a Troubled Meatpacker Makes a Stunning Comeback

After Trump’s Election, a Troubled Meatpacker Makes a Stunning Comeback

JBS, a giant Brazilian firm once fined billions for bribery, is trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Some credit President Trump’s era of deal-making for the company’s success.

A JBS facility in Montenegro, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. JBS is the world’s largest meatpacker. Credit…Diego Vara/Reuters

By Ana IonovaReporting from Rio de Janeiro

June 25, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

Less than a decade ago, the world’s largest meatpacker was in trouble. The Brazilian brothers who ran it were behind bars, and their company, JBS, had been fined billions of dollars for bribing politicians in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.

Now, JBS, a Brazil-based company with operations around the globe and a huge slice of the U.S. meat market, has made a stunning comeback, even as it faces continuing court cases related to price-fixing, child labor and environmental crimes in the Amazon rain forest.

After years of attempts by JBS, U.S. regulators finally approved a public listing for the firm on the New York Stock Exchange, setting aside concerns about the company’s business and protests from American beef producers, environmental groups and politicians across the political divide.

It is a major victory for JBS that provides it a big flow of capital and an American seal of approval. By trading on the world’s biggest stock market, the company can now reach a large pool of U.S. investors and raise more cash by issuing and selling shares to investors.

But the timing is raising eyebrows. A U.S. firm owned by JBS made the single biggest donation, $5 million, to President Trump’s inaugural committee, and the Brazilian company also doubled its spending on lobbying in the first three months of the year, a New York Times analysis of public records shows.

The donation and subsequent approval of JBS’s listing by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, headed by a new chairman appointed by Mr. Trump as the president reduces the commission’s independence, have fueled concerns from Democrats and watchdog groups that the firm’s gift may have helped it win favor from the administration.

An assembly line at a JBS plant in Santana de Parnaiba, Brazil. The firm provides lunches to public schools in the United States.Credit…Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

It has also drawn questions over whether a climate of deal-making fostered by Mr. Trump might have helped a company with a troubled track record access American investors and consolidate its market dominance in the United States, Brazil and elsewhere.

“This is a longstanding dream of theirs,” said Raquel Landim, a Brazilian television and online commentator who has written a book about JBS. “This listing is like the crown jewel in this comeback they are making.”

JBS did not respond to emailed questions and a spokeswoman for the S.E.C. declined to comment.

Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, said the president “greatly appreciates his supporters and donors,” but he “is not bought by anyone.”

“Any suggestion otherwise is simply false,” Ms. Alvarez added.

As one of four major meat companies in the United States, JBS holds millions of dollars in government contracts to supply public schools and food banks. In U.S. supermarkets, it sells beef, pork and chicken under brands like Swift, Pilgrim’s Pride and Blue Ribbon.

JBS shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 13, giving JBS access to cheaper and plentiful financing at a time when it is charting ambitious plans to expand in Africa and the Middle East.

Experts said the S.E.C.’s core responsibility was ensuring firms trading on U.S. markets are being transparent, not determining if they are risk-free or worthy investments.

“As long as the company provides full and fair disclosure, it’s up to the investors to decide,” said Henry T.C. Hu, a securities law professor at the University of Texas.

Weighing issues like human rights or deforestation, Mr. Hu added, is “not within the classic role of the S.E.C.”

A cattle on a farm near Vitoria do Xingu, Para, Brazil. The country is the world’s largest exporter of beef.Credit…Bruno Kelly/Reuters

The agency did carry out new requirements last year under the Biden administration forcing companies to disclose details about their effect on the climate, but the rules prompted legal challenges and, in March, they were dropped by the S.E.C.’s new leadership. JBS is one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, with annual levels exceeding those of Italy, according to environmental watchdogs.

Following the S.E.C.’s approval of the listing, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter asking Pilgrim’s Pride, a subsidiary of JBS, if it had donated to Mr. Trump’s inauguration as part of a quid pro quo agreement. The $5 million donation exceeded the combined contributions of Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple’s chief executive.

“The S.E.C.’s decision, made just months after the donation from Pilgrim’s Pride, raises questions regarding undue influence,” Ms. Warren wrote.

Large inauguration donations by companies are not prohibited by U.S. law, and there is no evidence that JBS or Pilgrim’s Pride received favorable treatment because of the contribution.

Pilgrim’s Pride, in a statement, said the gift was part of “a long bipartisan history of participating in the civic process.”

Employees preparing salted meat at a JBS plant in Santana de Parnaiba, Brazil.Credit…Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

Analysts said the donation reflected a broader lobbying rush taking hold in Washington, as companies jostle to influence decision makers in the Trump administration.

“We’re seeing more multinational companies seeking a better understanding of how they can navigate and influence policy,” said David Tamasi, a veteran Washington lobbyist.

In the first three months of 2025, JBS spent twice as much on lobbying, both in-house and through proxy firms, as it did in the same time period in 2024, according to a Times analysis of expenditure data compiled by OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

JBS has been scaling up its lobbying for years as it sought support for its listing. It retained lobbying firms with links to senators, set up a Washington office focused on government relations and hired strategists with government experience, like Karla Thieman, who served as chief of staff to Tom Vilsack, the former agriculture secretary.

Over the past year, JBS appears to have ratcheted up its efforts to forge closer ties to those in power, courting politicians in agricultural states and announcing new investments, including plans to spend $200 million on its beef processing plants in Texas and Colorado.

“Over time, JBS has been able to find levers of influence to pull,” said Joe Maxwell, a founder of Farm Action, an advocacy group that opposes corporate monopolies in the agricultural sector. “And that has obviously put them in a good position.”

A JBS plant in Santana de Parnaiba, Brazil. The company has ambitious plans to expand in the Middle East and Africa.Credit…Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

JBS started as a family-run slaughterhouse in rural Brazil in the 1950s and grew into one of the world’s most powerful food companies, with its meat products reaching some 180 countries and bringing in revenues last year of $77 billion.

But the company’s fortunes turned nearly a decade ago when it was implicated in a vast bribery scheme uncovered as part of a corruption probe known as Operation Car Wash that started in Brazil and cascaded across at least 12 countries. It toppled multinational companies and sent presidents and business executives to jail.

In 2017, JBS admitted to paying bribes to more than 1,800 officials in Brazil in exchange for government contracts and cheap financing from the country’s development bank. The loans helped JBS enter the United States and purchase dozens of struggling American brands, turning it into a global behemoth.

Brazilian authorities eventually ordered the holding firm behind JBS to pay $3.2 billion in the biggest settlement ever in the country. In 2020, during Mr. Trump’s first term in office, the U.S. Justice Department also fined the company hundreds of millions for violating anti-corruption laws related to Operation Car Wash.

The brothers who control JBS, Joesley and Wesley Batista, were briefly jailed as a result of the bribery scheme and stepped down from the company’s board of directors.

It did not take long for JBS to recover. Finding that prosecutors and investigators had behaved improperly, a Brazilian judge in 2023 revoked the $3.2 billion fine and, last year, both Batista brothers were reinstated as directors.

A JBS office in Australia. The firm’s meat products reach some 180 countries and brought in revenues last year of $77 billion. Credit…Patrick Hamilton/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Still, JBS has continued to face persistent accusations of unsavory practices. In 2023, a Brazilian state sued JBS after the authorities found the company was buying cattle raised in an illegally deforested reserve.

Investigators have also found that migrant children as young as 13 were working overnight cleaning shifts at JBS slaughterhouses in the United States. The company agreed this year to pay $4 million as part of a settlement with the U.S. Labor Department.

In February, JBS also agreed to pay $83.5 million to settle a class-action suit accusing the company of conspiring with other meatpackers to reduce U.S. beef supplies in order to artificially inflate prices.

In both cases, JBS settled without admitting any wrongdoing.

Until now, the company’s track record cast a shadow over its pitch to American investors. In 2023, a bipartisan group of 15 senators urged the S.E.C. to reject the company’s plans to list in the United States, citing JBS’s links to market manipulation and deforestation in Brazil.

Mighty Earth, an environmental advocacy group, estimates the company and its subsidiaries face several billion in continuing criminal, civil, tax and labor cases.

Yet the mood has now shifted, and observers worry JBS may be under less scrutiny moving forward because U.S. disclosure rules are more lax for foreign companies.

And JBS could use its new access to American markets to gain more of the global meat market, hurting small farmers, said Mr. Maxwell of Farm Action. “What are they going to do with that money?” he said. “We’re going to be watching.”

Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/world/americas/brazil-meatpacker-jbs-trump-nyse.html