A week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, American cattle ranchers are still angry about President Trump’s late-August decision to suspend some beef tariffs for 90 days, which made imports cheaper, especially from Brazil.
The administration said the pause would bring down prices for shoppers. Many ranchers were weeks from selling their cattle and took it as a betrayal, Meg Duff reported for Al Jazeera. Prices at cattle auctions dropped right after the announcement and cut into ranchers’ profits for a while. It isn’t yet clear whether grocery prices came down.
Mr. Trump said the United States would let in up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef over the 90 days with no out-of-quota tariff, Beef Central reported, and that he had a commitment that “this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.” He said the move would “substantially lower ground beef prices for American families while giving the U.S. cattle herd time to rebuild.”
On Sept. 4, signing two executive orders in the Oval Office, he said beef from Brazil, Argentina and “other places” would soon enter tariff-free, The Hill reported. That came after he met with Joesley Batista, who shares control of JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker and one of the four biggest beef processors in the United States. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Batista had lobbied Mr. Trump to drop the 26.4 percent import tax. Mr. Trump has called the pause “very limited” and said “our ranchers can handle it.”
The United States Cattlemen’s Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Farm Bureau all opposed the decision. Republicans who represent rural districts in Congress kept their distance from it.
David Anderson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University, said this year’s high prices should have pushed ranchers to build up their herds. Cheaper imports, he said, “really works against the market signal to expand and produce more domestically.” He added: “That got a lot of people pretty angry.”
The U.S. herd is close to its smallest size since 1951. Short supply drove cattle prices to records this year, but high interest rates ate into the gains, along with fuel and fertilizer costs tied to the Iran war, feed made pricier by drought and wildfires in Kansas and Nebraska. “We really don’t have much evidence of herd expansion,” Mr. Anderson said.
Tariff policy has swung back and forth. Last year Mr. Trump put a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, raising the cost of the lean Brazilian beef that is often mixed with fattier American beef for hamburger patties. In February he let more Argentine beef in duty-free, and in August he did the same for Brazil and Paraguay. Cattle futures jumped around after each move.
Other things moved prices too: closed packing plants, labor shortages late last month linked to ICE actions at packing plants in Kansas, the second-largest packing state, and the reopening of the southern border after a closure over New World screwworm. Over the long run, drought cycles have done more to shrink the herd than any tariff. Mr. Anderson said the pause had been “a hot topic for the last six weeks.”
Chad Basinger, a rancher in Pretty Prairie, Kan., called the announcement frustrating but not a threat to his business. “People are upset. They have a right to be upset. But they’re not going to change their strategy,” he said.
He expects some ranchers to switch parties or skip the vote. “But overall I don’t think it’ll be that much,” he said, adding that ranchers will also weigh the $8 billion in farm aid the administration announced in Kansas on Oct. 19.
His House district is expected to stay safely Republican. Kansas has an unexpectedly close Senate race, though, and possible swing districts in Montana, Iowa, Texas and Colorado sit in cattle country. Ranchers and farmers are a shrinking share of rural voters and aren’t likely to decide those races alone.
A 90-day pause that began in late August runs out in late November, a few weeks after the vote. It was not clear whether the administration would extend it.