Posted on 10/22/2025 10:58:08 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
Edited on 10/22/2025 11:30:49 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
President Donald Trump scolded America’s cattle ranchers in a Wednesday Truth Social rant that saw him declare that they’d be in dire straits without him.
Trump has faced criticism over his suggestion that the United States might buy more beef from Argentina.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
It will be a mighty cold day when farmers agree to limit production in the name of keeping prices high. High prices are like bones to a dog, and they'll go after it tooth and nail.
“If you do some web searching for the number of livestock culling that have been mandated by the U.S. and other nations over the last 5 years, you’ll immediately notice that the livestock levels are now at all-time lows.”
You are conflating diminished herds with culling mandates. Lingering drought conditions are the direct cause of herd shrinkage, not mandates.
They simply do not exist in the United States. European environmental regulations EXPLICITLY exclude cattle and apply only to pork and poultry.
Boy howdy!
In our neck of the woods, gas price fell to about $2.70, but now, it is over $3.50, highest in years.
Beef is outrageous. Prime ribeye steaks at Costco were $30 lb last weekend. Last year, I think they were $15.99. Not so long ago, I could buy prime sirloin tri tio steak for the same price as choice NY strip steak, both under $10/ lb..
I can’t imagine markets will allow this to last for long, because with the price of gasoline so high, who is going to pay those prices for beef , especially at a restaurant.
Price of gasoline and beef doubled one time in recent memory. ...ie under lightweight Obama, after 2009. Producer inflation hit about 8%, but consumer markets could not bear the price increase, so it resulted in a job meltdown, and the unemployment rate rising fron 7.5% to 10%, which con artist Obama blamed on Bush ,claiming “ it’s worse than we thought.” ,even though the recession ended by June 2009, more than six months earlier than Obama’s people predicted. Obamacare then thwarted the recovery ,along with the rising prices.
Obama had 0% fed funds rate for 8 years, but he ran up twice as much debt as Bush did after inheriting a recession, 6.5% fed funds rate, then getting hit with 9-11, and Bush went on a spending binge from 2007-2009 because Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Obama and Biden voted for all that spending. Obama then got away with lying and claiming he fixed the deficit, when in fact, he promised to balance the budget and did not even come close after 8 years of growth and low interest rates. Bush’s Bernanke was part of the problem.
Biden did lasting damage to energy markets, so I don’t blame Trump....but what is going on with beef? Did Trump kill the supply by tariffs? If so, he needs to tell leople tariffs are a targeted tax increase and remind voters that he cut their taxes and kelt them low, A tax is not inflation, it’s a tax. Trump could cut the corporate income tax to 10% or eliminate it tk help producers and importers now. We do NOT want a recession, which will lead to social and economic chaos and only will make inflation worse by bigger deficits and more soending, followed by more Fed easing. Businesses lose money dumping products for clearance prices, then take an ax to their workforce. Nothing gets solved by allowing a recession.
Didn’t Trump and Doge run on stopping foreign aid? $40 billion ain’t chump change.
Your statement contradicts itself. Do you mean the government will go after it tooth and nail? We've already seen oligopolistic practices with farm trade groups colluding with government to keep prices at a set level. Generally higher than what the market would reach in equilibrium.
And there’s a response with no research performed to back it up. Nice!
if I remember right during covid prices for feed went through the roof
the 55% is fake
On yesterday’s thread I posted:
Derrell Peel, agricultural economics professor at Oklahoma State:
There’s plenty of alternative protein sources in terms of pork and poultry, primarily in the U.S., that consumers could turn to that are in abundant supply and relatively cheaper. And yet beef demand has stayed remarkably robust.
Americans’ enduring appetite for beef has coincided with shrinking cattle herds. The number of beef cattle in 2025, 27.8 million, is the lowest it’s been since the 1960s despite the growing U.S. population, Agriculture Department data shows.
Over the last decade, in turn, the decline in cattle supplies has mainly been driven by drought conditions around the U.S., which reduced the available feedstock and forced many cattle ranchers to sell off their beef cows. They simply had no choice because of the drought.
Most recently, a severe drought started in 2021 and continued through last year, sweeping through the western half of the country.
Somewhere during that period, just about every major beef cow-producing area was subject to drought and subject to this sort of forced liquidation.
Even without the challenge of insufficient rainfall, herds take a long time to grow due to the biology of cattle. Cows can only have one calf at a time, and it takes longer for them to reach the age for slaughter than other livestock.
Thanks for that. I hadn’t read that drought was a primary factor. I will look into that further...
Government control of the meat industry, which has virtually eliminated small processors, is a far bigger factor than the drought in raising retail prices.
Farmers will increase production if they get a whiff of profit. I thought I was pretty clear.
Consider the sources. The Daily Fail is trotting this out, too.
Mr. President, bring back Country of Origin labeling for beef and pork.
That would do wonders for American ranchers.
Scolding individual producers in a competitive market is stupid. It’s the kind of thing a socialist would do. Trump just needs to shut up sometimes. He’s not going to get the vote of socialists stupid enough to think such statements are reasonable, and he’s just annoying everyone else.
And a nice glass of Malbec.
All the steps in the middle. In every market that has middlemen between the producers and the consumers the price goes up at least 100% every step. So the cattlemen sell to the slaughterhouses, which sell to the processors, which sell to the wholesalers, which sell to the retailers, which sell to the consumers. Boom boom boom. And the price jump is worse for things that can spoil, because you’re always losing inventory along the way. I remember when I was watching Deadliest Catch and the talked about how the crab fishermen were getting a buck a pound for crab that hits my grocery store at $14 a pound. The bottom of the chain always makes the least. Also the cattlemen don’t set the price, that’s set by the people that buy the cows, via the commodity market.
Only 32% of their stores are in America.
You mean the consolidation of the US meat industry into a few companies - like Tyson and JBS?
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