President Trump fired back at American cattle producers upset by his plan to buy beef from Argentina to help lower beef prices in the U.S. Arlan Suderman, the chief commodities analyst for StoneX, said the president’s post on Truth Social claimed credit for the high prices beef producers are experiencing.
“Basically, he’s attacking the cattle farmer for not lowering prices and for being upset. I think he’s reacting to the emotions he’s feeling from the cattle industry after talking about increasing imports from Argentina, and that reaction is creating more problems now. First of all, when it comes to Argentina, Argentina doesn’t have enough surplus beef to make much of a difference in the U.S. market. I don’t think we should be worrying too much about that, but they do have a surplus for exporting. Much of that goes to China, and China’s going to try to bid that away from us, if at all possible. So, I don’t think Argentina is a big threat. Now, if you take off the 50 percent tariffs from Brazil, that might be a totally different story.”
The post on Truth Social, according to Suderman, was wrong.
His post about how cattle ranchers need to lower the price for beef, and that they’re just experiencing good prices today because of his tariffs, is pretty unfounded. First of all, we’ve had high cattle prices long before he applied tariffs, because we have a tight supply of cattle. We’ve got the lowest number of cattle in the United States that we’ve had in 74 years. Demand, though, is very strong in the United States for beef. We’ve got a good product, and today’s consumer wants protein in their diet. While the 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian beef are contributing to the higher prices in the United States, that’s just a piece of the puzzle, and that is not the main cause. The main cause is the lower numbers and the strong demand that we have in the United States overall.”