It has been a whiplash-inducing month for the American rancher, one of United States President Donald Trump’s most steadfast voting blocs.
Starting with an October 19 quip from Trump that the US would increase beef imports from Argentina to the ensuing rancher backlash against the announcement of an investigation into the hyperconsolidated US meatpacking industry and the dropping of tariffs on Brazilian beef, ranchers have found themselves caught between the president’s desires to appease both them and the American consumer in the face of high beef prices.
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US ranchers have enjoyed rising cattle prices, largely the result of the lowest herd numbers for beef cattle since the 1950s. Other factors constricting supply include the closure of the Mexican border to live cattle due to concerns over screwworm and steep tariffs on foreign beef.
Cattle prices paid to ranchers are separate from consumer beef prices, which, as of September, were $6.32 for a pound (453 grams) of ground beef, an 11 percent rise from September 2024 when they were $5.67 a pound. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release economic data, including the consumer price index for last month, because of the government shutdown.
Trump had no patience for the typically loyal ranchers objecting to his plan to import more Argentinian beef, which they saw as a threat to their recent economic gains.
“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,” Trump wrote in an October post on his Truth Social platform.
While Corbitt Wall, a commercial cattle manager and market analyst, is clear that he “totally supports Trump and everything he does”, he also saw hubris and a misunderstanding of the cattle industry by the president.
“There was not a person in the cattle business on any level that was not insulted by that post,” he told Al Jazeera.
Wall religiously follows prices across the cattle trade from ranch to slaughterhouse and has watched the futures market for cattle slide down by more than 15 percent since Trump’s October 21 announcement.
Futures prices dictate what ranchers can expect to sell cattle for down the line and sway current sale prices as well. For ranchers’ sake, Wall said he hopes Trump leaves the cattle market alone.
“He doesn’t live in this world, in this cattle world, and doesn’t realise the impact that a statement can make in our business,” Wall said.
Years of rough seasons
Oregon rancher David Packham said that while cattle prices have jumped in ranchers’ favour, many are still struggling in the face of years of rough seasons.
Years of drought across the country raised feed costs for all and pushed some ranchers to sell off cattle. Sticker prices on farm equipment from tractors to pick-up trucks have ballooned as well, especially on the back of supply chain challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, and are expected to rise further on account of Trump’s tariffs.
Packham said he has regularly sold cattle at a loss and doesn’t want consumers to think ranchers are living high off the hog.
“I’m looking at a 40-year-old tractor that I use on a daily basis just to keep putting off replacing it, making repairs, although it’s difficult to find parts for now, just to keep it limping along because I couldn’t afford $100,000 for a new tractor,” Packham said. “When I say we’re not really making a whole lot of money, it’s because we have all this loss carryover.”
Packham was a registered Republican until Trump’s first term. The president’s Argentina comments and the subsequent chaos for the cattle industry have propped open a door for ranchers critical of Trump, but they represent a minority within the community, he said.
“I’m noticing more and more of them [ranchers] that had been cautiously neutral, that are now kind of like me and just saying, ‘You know what? No. This is bulls***. He’s a train wreck,’” Packham said.
‘Perennial issue’
One action ranchers can support, however, is Trump’s November 7 announcement of a Department of Justice investigation into the big four US meatpackers – Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef – “for potential collusion, price fixing and price manipulation”.
Historically, ranchers looking to sell cattle have held little negotiating power as the four companies control more than 80 percent of the market.
However, a prior Department of Justice investigation into meatpacker price-fixing was started under the first Trump administration in 2020 due to a gulf created by falling cattle prices and rising consumer beef prices. The investigation continued under President Joe Biden’s administration but was never publicly concluded. According to Bloomberg News, the investigation was quietly closed with no findings just weeks before Trump announced the November antitrust probe.
James MacDonald, a research professor in agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland, views the administration’s antitrust investigation announcement as “entirely for political consumption”.
“It is a perennial issue that p***es off ranchers, and you can gain some political ground by attacking the packers,” MacDonald said.
Packham would prefer the new investigation to come at a different time and said that given the squeeze from the tight cattle market, packers are operating under slimmer margins and not from a position of absolute power.
On Friday, Tyson announced the closure of a Nebraska beef-processing plant that employed more than 3,000 people. MacDonald called the decision a “shock” indicative of the depths of the US beef shortage. The current low cattle inventory in the US came from years of drought, which wiped out grazing lands and slowed herd rebuilding. Replenishing the cattle supply chain is a years-long process.
“That’s sort of a fact and a fundamental, and it’s not going to change for a while,” MacDonald said.
MacDonald also doesn’t believe the increased Argentina imports will ease this shortage or lower prices as the country largely sends lower-grade, lean beef to the US, accounting for only 2 percent of imports. He expected that while the reintroduction of largely lean Brazilian beef will impact the import market, it holds less weight on overall beef supply.
McDonald also cited heifer retention numbers, which indicate how many female cattle that ranchers hold back to produce future herds years down the line, which are still low.
Tyson likely factored in these numbers when making the decision to shutter its Nebraska plant, and it doesn’t seem like the industry is expecting herd numbers to rebound either, McDonald told Al Jazeera.
“It’s Tyson saying we don’t think cattle supplies are going to recover anytime soon,” MacDonald said.
While the actual mechanisms of Trump’s recent policies might not budge consumers’ bottom lines or change the cattle market for the time being, Wall is more concerned about the ripple effects from the news cycle, saying ranchers “live and die” by the cattle markets. While his faith is shaken, Wall regardless believes that ranchers, conservative as ever, will show up for Trump when election time comes around.
“You look at what the other side has to offer, and there’s no way people are going to go for that,” Wall said. “So in the long run, they’ll stick with him.”