Memorandum
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- Connor Quincy via fox - Opinion
- Date
- Filed
- Economy·6 min to read
- Re
Beef Prices Hit Record High as Trump Orders Aim to Cut Ranching Rules
ReBeef Prices Hit Record High as Trump Orders Aim to Cut Ranching Rules
Ground beef has reached a record $6.92 per pound, nearly 60% more than five years ago, as the U.S. cattle herd sits at a 75-year low and four companies control roughly 85% of processing capacity. President Trump signed two executive orders on September 4 directing agencies to reduce regulatory barriers, expand state-inspected meat sales across state lines, and support smaller processors.
Ground beef has climbed to a record $6.92 per pound, nearly 60% more than Americans paid five years ago, as the nation's cattle herd has fallen to a 75-year low and a handful of companies control most of the country's beef processing. The price surge has turned a staple of family meals — hamburgers, taco night, meatloaf — into a growing strain on household budgets, and it has pushed the Trump administration to act.
A temporary order that took effect September 1 expanded lower-tariff access for 300,000 metric tons of imported lean beef trimmings, aiming to put more beef on the market while the domestic herd rebuilds. The move drew sharp criticism in ranching country, where producers argue that a flood of cheaper foreign beef pushes cattle prices down just as American ranchers need stronger prices to justify rebuilding their herds.
But the deeper problem, according to critics of current policy, is not how much beef the country imports. It is why raising and processing beef on the other side of the world, shipping it thousands of miles, and selling it in the United States can be cheaper than producing it at home. Part of the answer lies in a regulatory system that makes it easier for foreign beef to cross an ocean and land on a shelf in New York City than for a Nebraska rancher's beef to cross the state line into Iowa.
A rancher whose cattle are processed under a state inspection program certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as equal to the federal standard still cannot sell that meat one mile over the border. The bureaucracy has built a system where importing is simpler than selling to a neighboring state, leaving ranchers with fewer buyers and less leverage.
Processing capacity compounds the problem. Four companies, two of them Brazilian-owned, now control roughly 85% of American beef processing capacity, up from 36% in 1980. Crushing regulations, excessive permitting, and the capital cost of running a federally compliant plant are so steep that only a handful of operations can absorb them. A small processor cannot open a competing plant, so the giants stay giants, and cattle producers across enormous stretches of the country are left with one or two buyers. A producer without competition for offtake does not set the price; he takes the only one he is handed.
The same dynamic appears when a rancher tries to sell directly to locals who want his beef. A neighbor who wants to buy a quarter of beef from the rancher down the road cannot simply do so. The animal must go through an inspected facility, and if the nearest one is hours away and booked out for months, the transaction does not happen. Ranchers who could sell directly to consumers at a fair price, cutting out the distant packer, are blocked not by a lack of demand but by a lack of anywhere nearby to legally get the job done.
The American cattle herd is at a 75-year low, and U.S. beef production is falling while Brazil has overtaken the United States as the world's largest beef producer. Ranchers themselves are disappearing. From 2017 to 2022 alone, the number of U.S. farms with beef cows fell by nearly 107,000.
President Trump signed two executive orders on September 4 aimed at strengthening American ranching and expanding competition in the beef market. The orders direct federal agencies to reduce regulatory barriers, expand opportunities for state-inspected meat to move across state lines, support smaller and regional processors, modernize inspections, and give ranchers more options for processing and selling their own beef.
Last week, the USDA took another step, announcing plans to help states start or expand their own meat-inspection programs. That move opens the door for more local processors to compete and gives ranchers more options for getting their beef to market. The reforms go directly at the problem by creating more processing capacity, giving ranchers more ways to sell, and cutting the red tape standing between American beef and American consumers.
The pattern is not unique to beef. Federal timber harvests are down roughly 75% from their 1960-1990 average, even as national forests sit full of standing timber. It now takes seven to ten years on average to permit a new mine in the United States, compared to two to three years in Canada. The concern among critics is that American industry is buried under bureaucracy until it becomes cheaper to buy the finished product from somewhere else.
Rebuilding the nation's herds and reclaiming its place as the world's beef superpower, they argue, will not happen under a system run by bureaucrats instead of ranchers. Decades of regulation have put one of America's oldest industries at a systemic disadvantage, and ranchers say they do not need a handout — they need the freedom to do what they do best: feed America.
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