Good news, burger lovers. Help is on the way. Last month, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he has “concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef.” Well, it’s about time. As someone who covers the barbecue beat, I’ve been keeping a close eye on beef prices the past few years, especially brisket. They’ve kept going up. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of ground beef nationwide has risen 24 percent, from $5.55 per pound in January 2025 to $6.89 this summer.
Fortunately, that’s about to change – and just in time for football tailgating season. President Trump announced that for 90 days, which is to say until just after the midterm elections in November, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported with greatly reduced tariffs. “We have a commitment,” Trump declared, “that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.”
Shortly after Trump’s announcement, an unnamed White House official told the New York Times the 25 percent discount was a deal struck with “foreign beef exporters.” The details are sketchy and confusing. Why would foreign exporters discount their prices when the importers pay the tariff? How does the government guarantee those discounts get passed on to consumers? And how much can they move the needle in just 90 days?
Fiddling with quota numbers doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect of reducing beef prices
One thing is clear: American ranchers hate the idea. Within hours of the Truth Social post, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association issued a statement expressing its “disappointment” and asserting that “flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd.” Republicans from beef-producing states have been uncharacteristic in their public disagreement with the President.
What does Trump’s plan actually involve? I could delve into the minutiae of “tariff rate quotas” and out-of-quota rates, but your eyes would glaze over faster than you could say “Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, Revision 17.” The key point is that the US maintains specific beef quotas for seven named countries, and all others share a quota of 52,000 metric tons. The President’s action raises the pooled quota for those “other countries or areas” by 300,000 tons. Of the top seven beef exporters, only one – Brazil – is in the “other countries” bucket, so pretty much all of the beef imported under the newly relaxed quotas would have to come from Brazil. And the beef we are talking about is predominantly the lean trimmings used for ground beef, not the premium cuts carved into steaks, roasts or briskets. So don’t expect to see any relief at your neighborhood barbecue joint this fall.
But what about at the local burger joint? You may recall that in February, Trump signed a similar proclamation increasing Argentina’s beef quota for the year from 20,000 to 100,000 metric tons with the express purpose of lowering prices. As of June, the average price of ground beef had ticked up from $6.74 to $6.89 per pound. So fiddling with quota numbers doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect of reducing prices.
The February proclamation, I should note, was entitled “Ensuring Affordable Beef For The American Consumer.” The latest is entitled “Further Ensuring Affordable Beef For The American Consumer.” If they keep on “ensuring affordable beef” like this, we’ll all go broke.
Let’s not forget, though, how we got into this mess. The ever-upward price climb began several years ago, as long-running droughts wiped out grassland in Texas, Oklahoma and the southeast. Lacking sufficient forage, farmers thinned their herds, leaving cattle inventories at their lowest levels in half a century.
Unfortunately, there’s not much anyone can do in the short term to fix that. It takes around 15 months for a heifer to reach breeding age, nine months for a calf to gestate and another 18 to 20 months for that calf to reach its finishing weight. Even if American ranchers take the long-term bet and invest in increasing herd sizes, it isn’t going to meaningfully affect the domestic beef supply (and therefore prices) for several more years.
Indeed, as a recent report from the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service explains, high beef prices are forcing ranchers to decide between profits today and profits tomorrow. “There’s pressure to just sell [their heifers] now and take advantage of the market and then worry about rebuilding next year,” beef cattle specialist Jason Cleere writes. A big factor in that decision is forecasting what beef prices might look like in the future.
On that front, waiving tariffs sends mixed signals to ranchers. Is rebuilding herds going to pay off down the road, or will politicians keep raising quotas every time voters squawk about prices? (One could make a wisecrack here about Trump always chickening out, but we’re talking beef, not poultry.)
There is something odd about the current state of beef consumption, too. As I noted in my February Pit Stop column, demand for smoked brisket has proven stubbornly inelastic, and so has Americans’ seemingly insatiable appetite for burgers, despite record-high prices. In the near term, there’s not much consumers can do to increase the beef supply, but we can control our demand. Why not look for alternatives instead of griping about prices while opening our wallets?
I’m not suggesting we replace good old 80/20 ground beef burgers with grilled turkey patties (life’s too short), but chicken breasts make tasty sandwiches. On the barbecue front, we have lots of options beyond the ubiquitous sliced brisket. May I recommend smoked lamb shoulder, pork steaks or direct heat-cooked half chickens?
Of course, if we go down that route, it might signal to ranchers that beef is in decline, and they’ll forgo replenishing their herds and switch to raising lambs instead. For the moment, it seems likely that the beef supply will keep tightening and prices will keep rising. Soon, we’ll have to take out second mortgages to fund our next visit to a Texas-style barbecue joint.
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