The tariff pause makes beef cheaper to import, particularly from Brazil, just as American ranchers were preparing to take their cattle to market. The impact on ranchers was swift: prices at cattle auctions fell, temporarily lowering their profits. The United States Cattlemen’s Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Farm Bureau, all member organisations representing ranchers, opposed the decision. Rural Republican members of Congress also distanced themselves from the move.
Chad Basinger, a rancher in Pretty Prairie, Kansas, said he is sceptical that the imports will have a significant impact. “I know there’s people that have said, ‘Well I’m just gonna vote for the other party’ or ‘I’m not gonna vote’ or ‘This administration’s really let me down’. So yes, there will be people that swing the other way in the midterms. But overall I don’t think it’ll be that much,” Basinger said. Ranchers will also be weighing the administration’s other actions, such as the $8bn in farm relief announced in Kansas on October 19.
Basinger’s House of Representatives district in Kansas is expected to remain safely Republican, but Kansas faces an unexpectedly tight Senate race. Potential swing districts in Montana, Iowa, Texas and Colorado are all in cattle country, though it is unlikely that ranchers alone will decide elections. America’s cattle herd is near its smallest size since 1951 and the number of ranchers has declined alongside livestock numbers. Observers worry that ongoing uncertainty fuelled by tariffs, fuel prices and drought may cause the ranching population to shrink further.
David Anderson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University who advises ranchers, said that high prices this year should have given ranchers the confidence to invest in the future and expand their herds. Making imports cheaper, however, may have had the opposite effect. “It really works against the market signal to expand and produce more domestically,” Anderson said. “That got a lot of people pretty angry.”
This is not the first time Trump’s tariffs have impacted cattle supplies. Last year, the president added a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, raising the cost of importing Brazilian lean beef. In February, Trump allowed more tariff-free beef imports from Argentina. In August, he did the same for Brazil and Paraguay. Both tariff changes led to swift price swings in cattle futures markets. Cattle prices also moved this year in response to plant closures by meatpackers, labour shortages related to ICE actions at Kansas packing plants, and the reopening of the southern border after a closure due to New World screwworm disease.
The shrinking US cattle herd has less to do with short-term price changes and more to do with drought cycles, which are growing more intense as warming temperatures increase evaporation. Still, tariff changes add uncertainty. “This has been a hot topic for the last six weeks,” said Anderson. “It just adds a little more uncertainty or volatility — or worries or stress.”
This year, low US cattle supplies meant record-high cattle prices despite added imports, but profits were lower than hoped due to high costs for interest rates, fuel and fertiliser from the war with Iran, and feed from drought. In states such as Kansas and Nebraska, ranchers also faced destructive wildfires. Basinger said ranchers who raise cows and calves generally did well this year, but “it needs to help for a little longer to give them more of an edge”. He said most ranchers are upset but will not change their strategy. The bigger concern is for the next generation, who must decide whether to continue ranching or sell family land.