President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that he knows better than American cattle ranchers as he prepares to gut their business.
Writing on Truth Social, the president tried to douse the fire sparked by his offer to buy Argentine beef, claiming that outraged cattle ranchers were simply too stupid to grasp the brilliance of his economic machinations.
“The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil,” Trump wrote. “If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years—Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!”
But cattle ranchers, and the rest of America, see Trump’s offer for what it really is: part of a hefty package of handouts the U.S. president has pledged in the hopes of buying Argentine President Javier Milei a victory in the country’s upcoming election.
The National Farmers Union observed that Trump’s tariffs on soybeans have sent China into the arms of Argentina, which had already received a massive bailout from the U.S. government. “The last thing we need is to reward them by importing more of their beef,” the union said in a statement.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association slammed Trump’s plan Monday, pointing out that in the last five years, Argentina has sold more than $801 million of beef into the U.S. market, compared to more than $7 million that American cattle ranchers had sold to Latin American nation.
And Farm Action, an agricultural watchdog group, called the plan “a betrayal of the American rancher,” lamenting that “after crashing the soybean market and gifting Argentina our largest export buyer, [Trump is] now poised to do the same to the cattle market.”
It doesn’t take a genius to see that Trump’s move would give American ranchers the short end of the stick. Even the most devoted MAGA members, who tend to bandwagon the president’s most inane whims, don’t see Trump’s logic. Right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren called the move a “disgrace” and a “stab in the back” for ranchers, in a post on X. Meriwether Farms, a beef producer in Wyoming that touted its “love” for the president, warned that Trump was betraying “the very people who put food on the table for us.”
Beef prices in the United States have been steadily increasing as the shrinking American herd struggles to keep up with high demand. NPR reported that America’s beef cattle herd is the smallest it’s been in 75 years, in part because of drought brought on by the changing climate of cattle states. Beef prices have increased 51 percent since February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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