To truly experience the Trump tariff rollercoaster, hop on the ear-popping ride American cattlemen, meatpackers and U.S. beef eaters have been on over the past few months.
In mid-August, the White House raised import tariffs on Brazilian beef to 50% because, it explained, the nation was conducting a “politically motivated persecution, intimidation … and prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.”
Bolsonaro, in fact, was convicted by a jury for attempting to overthrow Brazil’s newly elected government. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
But Brazil is a leading exporter of “beef trim,” beef “blended” into U.S. ground beef, so cattle futures prices soared on the new import hurdle. The U.S. imported 1.1 billion pounds of Brazilian beef in the 12 months prior to the announcement. After it, every ounce had to pay a 50% ransom to enter the U.S.
That news came after the administration closed the U.S. border to Mexican feeder cattle due to an outbreak of screwworm. That stopped the flood of 1.2 million head of Mexican cattle per year — or about 25,000 per week — into the U.S. With U.S. cattle numbers at a 70-year low, the closure was huge news.
The two actions propelled U.S. cattle futures prices from $210 per hundredweight (cwt) to $250 per cwt, adding $400 or so in value per head of slaughter cattle.
Every smiling cowboy, however, lost his humor three months later when the tariff-wielding President Trump canceled most of his tariffs on Brazilian beef and quadrupled the level of Argentine beef imports to the U.S. The reasons, again, were political: election results in both the U.S. and Argentina.
Cattle futures prices plunged. Coupled with a mid-October decline, the swoon meant “live cattle saw a $30 correction from the (summer highs) and feeder cattle futures set back nearly $70” per cwt. Here’s how one of the sector’s leading publications, Drovers Journal, characterized the crack-up:
“The cattle market chaos wasn’t tied to fundamentals but liquidation by speculative traders on fear of policy changes by the administration as President Donald Trump announced a plan to lower beef prices for consumers.”
The day after the tariff-reduction news slapped the market, the President — again reading the political tea leaves — announced the Department of Justice would “launch an investigation into meatpacking companies,” noted Politico, “which he accused of illegally manipulating beef prices at the expense of beef farmers and consumers.”
Any day the DOJ investigates meatpackers is a good day. But that day was needed 30 years ago before packers became virtually untouchable by any court.
And that’s not just my view; it’s what the American Action Forum, a Washington, D.C. think tank that leans so far right it defies gravity, noted recently in a lengthy piece titled “Unpacking Trump’s Meat Packing (sic) Allegations.”
While the industry is “highly concentrated, dominated by four firms,” it explained, “…the four-firm concentration ratio has not materially changed over the past 30 years.”
Moreover, it continued, market data shows that “packers margins were -$170.00 per head during the week ending Nov. 1, 2025, a slight improvement from the -$253.28 in the prior week… [and] that meat packer margins will average -$165.96 per head in 2025.”
Which strongly suggests that the Trump administration threw badly bleeding packers a lifeline by opening U.S. markets to enormous, unlabeled supplies of South American beef to cut their losses — not to trim soaring retail prices paid by American eaters.
And then it dropped the curtain of a meaningless DOJ investigation of meatpackers around it to deflect any inquiries.
That’s not a recipe to help either American cattlemen or the beef-buying public. It will, however, make some fine, Grade A baloney.
(The Farm and Food File is published weekly throughout the U.S. and Canada. Past columns, recommended reading, and contact information are posted at farmandfoodfile.com. © 2025 ag comm)
