Trump's Beef Import Plan Delivers 20% of Target as Prices Stay High

The U.S. has imported just 59,423 metric tons of beef under President Donald Trump's 300,000-ton tariff-relief program — 20% of the target — and ground beef prices haven't moved meaningfully since the policy launched.

Trump signed a proclamation in August allowing 300,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings to enter the country at a reduced tariff rate over 90 days, from September through November. The goal was straightforward: add supply, cut grocery bills.

"This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again," Trump wrote on Truth Social when announcing the policy.

The numbers tell a different story. As of Oct. 19, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show shipments at roughly a fifth of the target. Ground beef averaged $6.79 per pound in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — down from $6.92 in August, but still above $6.32 a year earlier. That's a 7% year-over-year increase, far outpacing the 2.5%–2.9% rise in overall U.S. grocery prices.

Trump has framed beef affordability as a priority for the second half of his term, aiming policy at the Republican base of farmers. "It really became unacceptable to the voter," he said last month. "And we do have to get elected, because if we're not going to get elected, your ranchers and your farmers are in big trouble."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why aren't beef prices falling?

The core problem, according to agricultural economists, is that lean beef trimmings rarely reach retail shelves. They're blended with fatty trimmings from American feed lots and sold to fast food restaurants — not to grocery shoppers looking for relief.

"The simple assumption there was that if we can just increase supply of beef in the U.S., that should lower prices," Derrell Peel, a professor of agribusiness specializing in livestock at Oklahoma State University, told Fortune. "Unfortunately, the beef industry is much more complex than that."

Peel explained that demand for lean trimmings is already modulated. The industry was importing as much as it needed even with tariffs in place.

"When you take away the tariff, you make it cheaper, but you don't necessarily increase the demand because we only need so much of it," Peel said. "We were getting as much as we wanted."

Supply constraints compound the issue. Brazil and Argentina, which supply much of America's imported beef, are dealing with their own low cattle inventories.

Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economics professor at Kansas State University, argued the policy runs against how markets clear. Beef demand rose 5.9% in the first six months of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier — even as prices climbed. Tonsor blames demand, not herd size, for high prices, noting that U.S. herds have been shrinking for 60 years and that trend is priced in.

"If you erode beef demand, you will erode beef prices," Tonsor told Fortune. His prescription: let prices rise until demand softens, which would ease costs naturally — but that would also slow imports, undermining the rationale for shipping in 300,000 metric tons at all.

What does this change for ranchers?

Farmers largely oppose the intervention itself. American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall asked Trump to roll back the policy in a statement last month, warning the imports would depress cattle prices and could cost ranchers $300 to $400 per head.

"To put it simply, the plan undercut a fragile recovery in the cattle industry while failing to benefit consumers," Duvall said.

What's keeping farmer anger in check is the program's own weakness, Peel noted. The modest import volume hasn't crushed cattle prices. What bothers producers more is the precedent of a White House interfering in an industry that has historically run on free-market principles.

"Nothing is simple here," Peel said. "There's no simple answer when it comes to anything you might want to do policy-wise to influence this market."

With the program's 90-day window closing at the end of November, the practical question for practitioners is whether the White House renews it, expands it, or lets it lapse — and whether any of those moves would touch a retail price that imports, so far, haven't budged.