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American ranchers’ beef with Donald Trump and his administration is still simmering.
The Justice Department last week announced plans to investigate meatpacking companies (“cartels,” as Trump called them), after Trump blamed them on Truth Social for high beef prices. The New York Times described the investigation as an attempt to “mollify” ranchers, whom the president enraged with his bailout of Argentina.
“Our investigation is underway!” Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed Friday in a repost of Trump’s social media announcement, saying the Justice Department’s antitrust division will work alongside the U.S. Department of Agriculture to target alleged price-fixing in the meatpacking industry.
That ranchers need to be mollified at all stems from the Trump administration’s decision to hand billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to beleaguered Argentina — one of the United States’ biggest competitors in the global beef market — for the purpose of aiding the country’s Trump-allied president. In particular, some trade groups were apoplectic after Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will boost beef imports from Argentina as domestic ranchers suffer under the weight of his tariffs.
The initial response to the president’s effort to engender some good will from the American meat industry wasn’t great.
While some Trump supporters online — and the Washington Post editorial board — rolled their collective eyes over the proposal’s similarity to Biden administration policies, others took direct shots at the administration’s close ties to the industry it intends to investigate.
Take for example pro-Trump beef company Meriwether Farms, which has called Trump’s plan to purchase Argentinian beef an “absolute betrayal.” In a response to the investigation announcement, the company addressed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and called out the former Tyson Foods executive who was appointed to oversee U.S. meat packaging. Earlier this year, Tyson reached a massive settlement in a lawsuit over price-fixing allegations (Tyson denied wrongdoing).
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a critic of the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, dismissed the announcement in a social media post of his own. Massie noted that the biggest donor to Trump’s inaugural fund was a subsidiary of JBS, a Brazilian meat processor that also settled a multimillion-dollar lawsuit earlier this year over price-fixing claims (the company denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement).
“Brazilian owned meatpacker JBS, through its U.S. subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride, donated $5 million to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, which was the largest single contribution to the fund,” Massie wrote. “As long as we don’t have country of origin labels on our beef, this is all just B.S!"
By adding this beef-buying gambit to his Argentinian bailout, Trump compounded a problem of his own creation. The newly announced probe into alleged price-fixing may theoretically lead to a relief from high beef costs, but it’s noteworthy that some his own supporters seem unconvinced.