Donald Trump announced Friday that he was scrapping U.S. tariffs on beef, coffee, tropical fruits and a broad swath of other commodities — a dramatic move that comes amid mounting pressure on his administration to better combat high consumer prices.
Trump has built his second term around imposing steep levies on goods imported into the U.S. in hopes of encouraging domestic production and lifting the U.S. economy. His abrupt retreat from his signature tariff policy on so many staples key to the American diet is significant, and it comes after voters in off-year elections this month cited economic concerns as their top issue, resulting in big wins for Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and other key races around the country.
I still don’t understand how tariffs on beef even matter. We grow so much beef in the US that it strikes me as stupid to buy from non-domestic sources. I live less than 10 miles from beef cattle in a field. Hell one of my coworkers’s family has a herd.
I don’t eat much beef but have seen prices rise along with everything else in the last 5 years but assumed it was just general gouging. Read an article last week that detailed how climate change (damaging crops and yields), increased feed cost and international competition have made many generational beef ranchers selling off stock in the last few years as they can’t afford to feed them.
Maybe domestic beef is primarily high grade and the bulk of the beef American households consume is cheap ground beef. If so, then we might export the good stuff for profit and import the shit for pennies.
That’s just a thought. I don’t follow the beef industry.
It’s ok. My coworker couldn’t make it make sense to me either. He also won’t sell me cow. I’ve asked. Every now and then I see half cows for sale, but the price is hardly better per lb than store bought and I would still have to break down the half myself which takes time I’m disinclined to spend without significant savings beforehand.
This is the case for most of US exports. There’s a unique situation where we have the infrastructure/capital to produce some actually good stuff, but at the same time American consumers have no standards. The good stuff gets sent abroad to discerning markets and we import cheap slop to sell here. I can’t think of another country whose domestic production oversteps its own markets quite like America
We can’t afford standards.
From what I could find from a couple of minutes of searching the US imports slightly more that 50% of it’s beef.
So if the price of half of all beef goes up, and not everyone is going to be able to have domestically produced beef, supply doesn’t meet demand. so the price will go up, especially if people don’t seek out substitutes. It would only go up so much until it gets to the point where the price of imported beef is competitive.
Also remember Trump put tariffs on everything. A rancher needs some parts for some equipment that broke down and it’s coming from another country? That’s going to cost more. Feed and medicine for the animals may cost more. I don’t raise cows so there’s probably a bunch of costs that have gone up that I can’t think of. Those costs result in it being more expensive to produce beef and that will also increase the price. In fact only reducing tariffs on food importers while still having them on everything else may screw over farmers as they may become unable to compete with farmers in other countries that don’t have to pay tariffs on equipment and supplies like US farmers do now.
Dude the ground beef you get at the store is often from like three different continents (read the label if it even has one). We’re deep into late stage global capitalism. We aren’t farm to tabling shit in this country.