Cut the bull: The real reason beef costs so much — and what Trump is trying to do

Ground beef just hit a record $6.92 a pound, nearly 60% more than Americans were paying just five years ago.

For millions of families, beef isn't a ribeye at a steakhouse; it's the largest source of protein in their diet. It's hamburgers on the grill, taco night, meatloaf, a roast in the crockpot.

America didn't forget how to raise cattle. We made it harder to do it, and American families are paying the price for a country that won't let its own ranchers feed it.

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The Trump administration is attempting to bring relief quickly. A temporary order took effect Sept. 1, expanding lower-tariff access for 300,000 metric tons of imported lean beef trimmings, putting more beef in the market while the herd rebuilds. It did not go over well in ranching country. Producers argue that flooding the market with cheaper foreign beef pushes cattle prices down at the very moment American ranchers need stronger prices to justify rebuilding the herd.

But the question has never been how much beef we should import. The real question is why it can be cheaper to raise and process beef on the other side of the world, ship it thousands of miles to America, and sell it here than to simply produce it at home.

Yes, American wages are higher, American beef is also the best in the world, and Americans have shown they'll pay for that. But none of that fully answers the question.

Here's what does: foreign beef can cross an ocean and land on a shelf in New York City more easily than a Nebraska rancher's beef can cross the state line into Iowa. A rancher who has his cattle processed under his own state's inspection program, one the USDA has certified as equal to the federal standard, still can't sell that meat one mile over the border. The bureaucracy has built a system where importing is simpler than selling to a neighboring state.

And that is only part of the problem.

Just look at beef processing. Four companies, two of them Brazilian-owned, control roughly 85% of American beef processing capacity, up from 36% in 1980. This isn't the free market. 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. This is a government-enabled monopoly. A small processor can't open a competing plant, so the giants stay giants, and cattle producers finishing and selling fed cattle across enormous stretches of the country are left with one or two buyers. A producer without competition for offtake doesn't set the price. He takes the only one he's handed.

The same scenario shows up again when a rancher tries to tap the free market and sell straight to locals who actually want his beef. A neighbor who wants to buy a quarter of beef directly from the rancher down the road can't just buy it. The animal has to go through an inspected facility, and if the nearest one is hours away and booked out for months, that transaction simply doesn't happen. Ranchers who could be selling directly to consumers at a fair price, cutting out the distant packer entirely, are blocked not by a lack of demand but by a lack of anywhere nearby to legally get the job done.

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The American cattle herd is at a 75-year low, and U.S. beef production is falling while Brazil has overtaken us as the world's largest beef producer. And ranchers themselves are disappearing. From 2017 to 2022 alone, the number of U.S. farms with beef cows fell by nearly 107,000.

American ranchers cannot compete until the barriers putting them at a disadvantage are torn down. That is exactly what President Trump is now trying to do.

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On September 4, he signed two executive orders 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.

And just last week, USDA took another step, announcing plans to help states start or expand their own meat-inspection programs, opening the door for more local processors to compete and giving ranchers more options for getting their beef to market.

These reforms go straight 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.

None of this is 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. We bury American industry under bureaucracy until it's cheaper to buy the finished product from somewhere else.

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We will never rebuild our herds or reclaim our title as the world's beef superpower under a system run by bureaucrats instead of ranchers. Decades of regulation have put one of America's oldest industries at a systemic disadvantage. Ranchers don't need a handout.

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They need the freedom to do what they do best: feed America. That's exactly what Trump is trying to give them.

Jesse Ramos is a columnist covering rural America, the working class and the industries that power the nation. He also serves as State Director of Americans for Prosperity-Montana.