Trump Calls on Ranchers to Lower Beef Prices; Officials Reveal Plan to Rebuild Herd

The Epoch Times ^ | 10/22/2025 | Kimberly Hayek

[Sequoyah101]

Glad I just quit looking at $2200 to $2500. I’ve had enough sticker shocks.

[sockmonkey]

77 cattle Ranchers go bust every day. I buy halves and slaughtering, aging, processing costs went up, so my supplier built their own processing plant. That was a 3 million (IIRC) dollar gamble. Ranchers are trying to stay afloat. For proud hardworking generational Ranchers this is heartbreaking.

[Sequoyah101]

Yep. An acquaintance wanted to lease some of my ground for summer feed. At one time he ran 500 stockers. I have not heard a peep about grazing for the last two years.

[Sequoyah101]

Why? Because they tested the market elasticity to higher prices and won. They found out even at higher prices they could still sell. What is more they made a hell of a lot more money for less effort. Two female auto execs stated their intention just about a year ago to keep inventory artificially low to inflate prices because they liked the shortage margins.

I spent 45 years in the oilfield. Went through two major Oil Country Tubular Goods tariff events. Prices went up but never came back down to anything close to what they had been when the tariff was lifted. Tariffs provide a means to test the market as a freebie and an excuse to keep prices high and facilitate that by pushing competition out.

Boom-bust cycles do about the same thing and I have seen 9 of those in that 45 years.

[Mr Rogers]

“BUT if this is what tariff protection brings, then you are begging for a flood of foreign beef.”

The drought was a few years back. At the time, as ranchers had to cut their herds, they warned higher prices would be in place for YEARS because you cannot regain XX cows overnight.

And yes, I do want my beef coming from the USA.

[Pollard]

Not sure this craze of $40-50/lb "grass fed" beef helps.

Here in MO, a rancher can set up a state inspected slaughterhouse for a fraction of the price of USDA and sell within MO. Too much of a bother for most though. They just want to collect the babies once a year and sell them at the livestock auction for $3-6/lb. - https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/filerepo/sites/default/files/1821/2025-10-12/1279797/ams_1821_00336.pdf

Guess we can't complain about $6/lb hamburger since that's most of the meat you get from a cow.

I would say the "grass fed" beef and "wholesome regenerative" marketing sellers getting $40-50/lb is partly to blame for the grocery store prices of $20/lb for a good steak. Will Harris of White Oak Pasture getting on the Joe Rogan show had to be a helluva boost to his business.

Seems to be no shortage of people who can afford $45/lb steaks too.

Current grocery ad has NY Strip $14/lb. Tri Tip roast $7. They don't even bother advertising ribeye or T-bone prices.

[PIF]

I just bought steaks a week ago that are labeled from Mexico.

—
Are you sure it was actually cow?

[PIF]

agreed.

[PIF]

I am seeing various prime cuts of meat at my grocery store on ‘remainder’ [ after having been marked down as on Sale ] priced at $25 and higher. No one is buying the meat because no one can afford it.

The market prices are simply pricing people our of meat, leading to still higher prices and higher waste in grocery stores.

Beyond Meat seems to be making a come back - at least on the stock market.

[PIF]

Not the price of gasoline - its the bulk price of diesel. Farmers, ranchers and large commercial fishing vessels buy diesel by the 10s of thousands of gallons.

[Donbue]

“…….after a prolonged drought that has impacted grazing lands and elevated feed expenses, forcing ranchers to reduce herd sizes.”

BS.

Biden’s (Obama’s sock puppet) policy makers kicked ranchers off federal lands for climate change crap reasoning.…like reducing cow farts.

The herds had less grass, the ranchers culled the herds to fit what little was left for grazing. Period.

Droughts come and go. They’ve yet to cause prices to triple in four years until the sock puppet. And it was all predicted. Remember comments four years ago about prices going up by 50% at the time? “Give it a couple years, they will be three and four hundred percent higher”

Yup.

[Sequoyah101]

Yup, marinade as usual, cook as usual and were fine. Not marbled really well but well enough. Sure would not grade high but high enough for me.

[Islander7]

Beef producers aren’t the problem. The packing house cartel is the problem. Beef price on the hoof averages $3.87, yet market beef runs about $10.00 a pound. That’s a heck of a big markup.

[Mariner]

This has nothing to do with tariffs.

That said, the US has a national interest in rebuilding the herds. We have a national interest in a healthy cattle industry.

And that is done by withholding heifers from the feed lots. That drives up the cost of cattle on the hoof.

And these ranchers NEED that extra revenue to retain and feed those heifers as they mature into brood cows.

Importing beef (and some of it is very good) will lower consumer prices and work to further undermine the cattle industry which is on the precipice.

[kaktuskid]

Blame Tyson and Cargill for high beef prices.

[Mariner]

The price of beef is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONATE to the price of feeder cattle on the hoof. And it always has been.

There is no conspiracy to mark up by the processors. Their costs are relatively static and their revenue/profit depends on volume.

As prices go up, volume goes down.

This is not gasoline. People have several options for animal protein.

[Mariner]

“Beef price on the hoof averages $3.87, yet market beef runs about $10.00 a pound. That’s a heck of a big markup.”

Do you have a clue on how much waste there is on a thousand pound steer?

[Mariner]

“Blame Tyson and Cargill for high beef prices.”

Sheer ignorance.

[BHI2025]

Sorry, not following...

“No one is buying the meat because no one can afford it... leading to still higher prices and higher waste in grocery stores.”

I price something at X, and “no one can afford it,” so I RAISE the price? Never. You lower the price or you go from one day of no sales to an eternity of no sales.

[BHI2025]

Oh, I’ve been lurking here since about 1958, so I know about the attackers, but in this case, I meant it literally. I KNOW Trump is not that stupid. How do I know this? Well, only one in 1,000 people are that stupid, AND... Trump had a beef company once. Remember that? Trump Steaks. I’m sure he wanted to price his beef at 1000 bucks per ounce. Hell, a billion an ounce would be even better. BUT HE DID NOT. And we all know why he did not. This is how I KNOW that he KNOWS ranchers don’t determine the price of meat.