From Bloomberg:
President Donald Trump said he would allow tariff relief for some ground beef imports in a bid to lower prices for American consumers, a key concern ahead of November midterm elections.
“Today, I concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families,” Trump said in a social media post Friday.
The president said that “for the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out of quota tariff. We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.”
If it’s good enough for ground beef, why not everything else?
For a comparison for Biden vs. Trump era hamburger prices, see here:
Figure 1: Price of ground beef, $/lb (black), 2021M01-2024M12 trend (blue), 2025M01-2026M07 trend (red). Orage shading denotes Trump 2.0 administration. Source: BLS and author’s calculations.
Trump sticks it to American farmers once again. If it’s not $5 plus diesel fuel for their machinery, then it’s undercutting their beef prices. That should incentivize more beef production, eh? Why do they keep voting for this buffoon?
Interesting coincidence how beef prices are scheduled to go up again immediately after the November elections.
I’m guessing that ranchers and commodity traders will take note of this, which may have the effect of reducing supply temporarily. Ranchers have some flexibility in when they decide to send cows to feedlots or the market.
Back in February, the hamburgler-in-chief allowed a quadrupling of beef imports from Argentina, but nowhere else. Remind me, beef prices have done what since then? Now, he’s letting Mexico, Brazil and others join the party. Keep doing the same thing over and over, until it works.
The hamburgler claims 300,000 tons of additional imports will give “space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again”. “Space” is one thing (or lots of ’em – who knows?), but it’s not what ranchers need. The U.S. beef herd is at its lowest level in history, because of drought and high feed and fodder costs. Climate change and war, not “space”, are the problems. Ninety days of reduced slaughter may increase the size of the U.S. herd, but maybe not. Where will the food and water come from to keep the cattle alive?
Off the top of my head, 300,000 tons in 90 days looks like a lot of lean beef – we import lean beef – but where will the fat “trim” come from to mix with the lean? Typically, it comes from domestic animals. So don’t we have to slaughter a proportionate number of domestic animals to blend with 300,000 tons of extra imports? And if we don’t have any domestic animals to spare just now, doesn’t that mean refrigerating the extra imports or letting them spoil? If we refrigerate them, doesn’t that raise the expense, while doing nothing for the domestic herd? Maybe the bottleneck is imports, but it kinda looks like we have a hamburger bottleneck with domestic animals, what with the smallest domestic herd in history and all.
This is another one of those stable-genius ideas, like the long-end bond buyback, that probably sounded better in the hamburgler’s head than it does out loud.
Here’s a look at live cattle futures price for October:
https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/LEV26/overview
There was a sharp drop on the open, presumably in response to the hamburgler-in-chief’s announcement, but then a steady rise through the session. At the close, October cattle were down 0.03% on the day – essentially flat.
Prices had already been falling this week. Ahead of the weekend, short-covering would be the normal trade; so maybe the hamburgler will get his way on Monday. For now, all he has accomplished is volatility.
Come to think of it, we’ve seen market interventions in both bonds and beef within the last week, as well as a TACO on raising tariffs on Canadian goods. We’ve also intervened in Eur/Jpy recently. Of the four, the beef intervention has drawn the most immediate howls from other Republicans, evidence that the hamburgler-in-chief didn’t ask around about this latest intervention before announcing it. That’s not new, of course, but it’s other Republicans who are running for office this year, not the hamburgler.
Anyhow, it looks like market manipulation is the hamburgler’s answer to voter anger over the economy. With perhaps the exception of yen intervention, every one of the hamburgler’s recent market interventions has been an effort to offset the harm of his own earlier interventions. Surely, there is a message here.
Have no fear – Trump is going to tell our great military to defend the bond market. They may have lost to the Iranian military forces, but those market forces don’t stand a chance against our Hegsethed military.
Senility – it comes and goes.
Reporter on Bond Market: “The yields have come back up since then. Have you talked to Bessent about another type of intervention?”
Trump: “The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will.”
What? He’s going to bomb the bond vigilantes? Will he sell war bonds to fund the bond war?
In 2025, Wisconsin exported $7.5 billion to $7.6 billion in goods to Canada, accounting for roughly 28% of the state’s total goods exports. Trump and the GOP/Tiffany’s tariffs on Canada will be catastrophic for Wisconsin business. In Washington, Rep. Tom Tiffany supports all these tariffs and now he wants to become Wisconsin governor? No – to Tom and GOP in mid-terms.
Don’t let Hovde off the hook. Everu vote for a Republican Senate candidate is a vote to empower the hamburgler-in-chief for another 2 years.