Trump’s 90-day beef fix meets years-long cattle problem

With the nation’s midterm elections only two months away, President Donald Trump wants hamburger prices down by election day — a goal he’s willing to pursue by allowing 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef into the country over the next 90 days. America’s ranchers — including many here in South Carolina — aren’t happy about it.

Trump explained the idea as he boarded Air Force One last week on his way to campaign for U.S. Sen. Darline Graham in Myrtle Beach.

“We want to get the beef prices down, so we’ll get them down a little bit, and, uh, that’s what people want, that’s what the voters want, and that’s what I want,” Trump told reporters on Aug. 21. “They [the ranchers] have done a fantastic job, but they admit that we need a little help in order to get the prices down.”

But S.C. Farm Bureau President Harry Ott didn’t sound like his members needed that kind of help when he responded the next day.

“S.C. Farm Bureau is disappointed by proposals to increase foreign beef imports at a time when America’s cattle producers are working hard to meet consumer demand,” Ott said in a statement. “We support efforts to keep food affordable, but those efforts should strengthen, not undermine, American farmers and ranchers.”

He added, “A strong domestic cattle industry is essential to our food security, rural economy and long-term supply of safe, high-quality beef.”

The S.C. Department of Agriculture did not reply to an Aug. 24 request for comment regarding Ott’s concerns. In a brief exchange, Ott didn’t say anything much different than the statement.

Like most stories about high prices, this one starts in the pre-pandemic year of 2019 when America’s cattle herd peaked at about 95 million head — more than enough to keep prices affordable.

But then, as Clemson agricultural economist Matthew Fischer describes it, a “perfect storm” struck the industry, throwing supply and demand out of balance in a way that’s still driving prices up to this day.

First, the normal cycle of cattle-herd growth and contraction, which typically takes about 10 years, began to enter its declining phase. That happens when large herds lead to falling prices, incentivizing ranchers to send more cattle, including breeding heifers, to market — which means fewer calves the next year.

Next, that normal contraction was supercharged by the arrival of a severe, prolonged drought across several Western states starting in 2021. It killed a lot of the grass that feeds 93% of the American herd. Forced to choose between buying expensive hay and sending more heifers to market, most ranchers did a bit of both — again reducing future calf counts.

Even then, though, American ranchers would normally have been able to replace some of their thinning herd with young cattle from Mexico — a critical pressure valve when U.S. supplies are low. But in 2024, when a dangerous parasite known as the New World screwworm — essentially, a fly that lays its eggs in body openings such as eyes and wounds — appeared in Mexico, the U.S. stopped cattle at the border.

And what happened while all this perfect storm of supply disruptions was playing out?
American consumers began eating more beef — first using pandemic relief checks to buy more meat to cook at home, and later keeping their meat consumption high once they’d developed the habit.

“We had all those things compound,” Clemson’s Fischer said. “So in 2020 and 2021, we started seeing a measurable increase in cattle and meat prices — and we’ve been riding that upward trajectory since.”

Though not a major cattle state like Texas or Oklahoma, S.C. has a small but significant ranching sector, with about 280,000 cattle spread over 6,500 farms. In keeping with the larger national contraction, that’s down more than 5% from last year.

Altogether, cattle contribute about $174 million to the state’s economy, according to state officials.

Deshawn Blanding, the Democratic nominee for state agriculture commissioner, told the Charleston City Paper he was “deeply troubled” by the damage from a temporary flood of beef imports.

“Ranchers were finally starting to make money after years of hard times,” said Blanding, a sixth-generation farmer and former policy analyst for the U.S. House Agriculture Committee. “If the goal is to make beef more affordable for families, we have to make sure ranchers aren’t the ones paying the price.”

What’s more, he noted, the Trump administration hasn’t said where the influx of tariff-free beef would be coming from.

“That makes it harder for people to know what they’re buying,” he said. “The farmer and the grocery shopper are on the same side, and the food system should work for both.”
Reached on Aug. 26, a spokesman for Republican nominee Cody Simpson said the candidate was unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, Fischer explained, the only long-term cure for high U.S. beef prices is a larger American herd, which is where S.C. can help.

S.C. farmers are less in the business of making beef and more in the business of making cattle to sell to Western ranchers, he said.

As for whether we’ve hit the bottom of the contraction cycle and are headed back up, Fischer is cautious.

“That’s the speculation right now,” he said. “But it’s going to take some time for us to come out of this.”