Farm Action: Trump opens the door to more foreign beef
Trump opens the door to more foreign beef A news briefing from Farm Action’s policy team
Trump turns to beef imports as ranchers struggle to rebuild U.S. cattle herd What happened: The Trump administration plans to allow 300,000 tons of ground beef to enter the U.S. at a lower tariff rate over the next 90 days in an effort to bring down record-high beef prices. President Trump said the imported beef would be sold at a 25% lower market price, but the administration has not yet said which countries will supply the additional beef. The announcement comes as U.S. ground beef prices reached an average of $6.89 per pound in July and the domestic cattle herd sits at a 75-year low. Source: President Trump’s Truth Social post, Civil Eats Why it matters: The administration says increasing imports will lower prices for consumers while giving the U.S. cattle herd room to rebuild. Last year, the U.S. agreed to import 80,000 metric tons of beef from Argentina, yet beef prices have continued to climb. Simply bringing more foreign beef into the country has not addressed the forces keeping prices high. Those forces include decades of consolidation in meatpacking and retail. The U.S. cattle herd is already at a 75-year low, and domestic producers need confidence that there will be a strong market for their cattle before taking on the cost of rebuilding their herds. Increasing imports could instead give large meatpackers greater access to lower-cost foreign beef, putting downward pressure on the prices independent ranchers receive without guaranteeing lower prices for consumers. There is a better path: rebuild the cattle herd, restore competition, and lower prices by strengthening America’s cattle sector rather than making it more reliant on foreign supply. Farm Action examined this challenge in our recent report, Lowering Beef Prices While Rebuilding America’s Cattle Sector. Our recommendations include restoring Mandatory Country-of-Origin Labeling (MCOOL) for beef, creating incentives for herd rebuilding, expanding regional processing capacity, strengthening competition enforcement, and using federal procurement to support domestic producers. If policymakers want lower prices and a resilient beef supply, they should address the market concentration driving the problem and invest in the producers and markets that can build it—not make the industry more dependent on imports. Thanks for reading the Farm Action Policy Feed! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. © 2026 Farm Action |