The official reason for Trump’s corrupt plan to drop tariffs on his foreign pals’ beef and sell it at a communist discount is to “substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families“.
But Trump’s foreign-crony beef probably won’t lower your grocery bill. It probably won’t even make it to your grocery store ground beef shelf:
If the imported beef ends up coming from Brazil, the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) says it likely won’t reach shoppers as fresh ground beef at all, meaning it wouldn’t deliver the price relief the administration is promising.
Gregg Doud, president and CEO of NMPF and a former chief U.S. agricultural negotiator, notes that nearly all dairy cull cow product flows into the ground beef supply, where it’s blended with trimmings from fed cattle carcasses.
“That would all have to be blended together, and essentially all of that would go into food service or fast food… fast food hamburger,” Doud says.
Asked whether the imported beef would actually reach grocery store shelves, Doud says no, pointing instead to two narrow outlets: fast-food hamburger and canned soup products, such as Campbell’s Chunky Soup.
For dairy producers who’ve leaned on strong beef prices to offset weak milk prices, Doud says the plan offers little relief — and he doesn’t expect it to move retail beef prices much either. Brazilian beef, he notes, is already the cheapest lean product on the world market (roughly 90% lean, versus about 80% for Australian product), so relieving the tariff mostly benefits the exporter, not the American consumer [Tyne Morgan, “JBS Ties to Trump’s Beef Import Decision Draw Sharper Scrutiny After Oval Office Meeting Revealed,” Drovers, 2026.09.01].
Wisconsin ag-economist Brenda Boetel comes to the same conclusion:
Brenda Boetel, professor and department chair of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, told WPR the plan to sell ground beef at 25 percent under market price doesn’t mean consumers will see that reduced price at the grocery store.
“That beef that we’re bringing in is lean beef trims … then we’re going to have to basically dilute it with current U.S. (beef), so maybe some fattier domestic beef, things like that,” Boetel said. “It’ll probably go to maybe school lunch programs, universities or fast food stores. That’s typically the location where that type of beef would go” [Trevor Hook, “Wisconsin Farm Bureau: Trump Beef Import Plan ‘Certainly Hurts Our Farmers’,” Wisconsin Public Radio, 2026.09.02].
Professor Boetel says Trump’s plan could actually entrench higher beef prices for consumers long-term by further depressing domestic supply:
“If we, at this time of year … put this massive volatility into the market that drops all these cattle prices down significantly. That’s a nice short term from the consumer’s perspective, right? However, we’ve just kind of stabbed ourselves in the foot here for a bit,” Boetel said. “That disincentivizes any growing of the herd, which means it’s even further down the road before we can produce enough beef for ourselves” [Hook, 2026.09.02].
The hardest-core Trump supporter could argue that we should tolerate the use of corrupt means to achieve his stated America-First ends. But this corrupt plan won’t even achieve its stated end of making the hamburger you buy at Hy-Vee cheaper. Trump’s ends are the same as his means: corrupt benefits for himself and his billionaire pals, and American consumers and producers be damned.