For Immediate Release
Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard
Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com
R-CALF USA Statement on President Trump’s Removal of Reciprocal Beef Tariffs
Billings, Mont., Nov. 14, 2025 – Today, President Donald Trump issued an executive order modifying his Executive Order 14257 of April 2, 2025, that imposed a trade-rebalancing 10% reciprocal tariff on imported products, including beef and lamb, from all trading partners. Exceptions to the reciprocal tariff requirement included beef, cattle, sheep and lamb from Canada and Mexico, as those products continued receiving preferential treatment provided they originated under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Today’s modification removes the 10% tariff requirement on imports of beef and beef products from countries other than Canada and Mexico, which remain exempt if those products originate under the USMCA. Today’s modification also did not remove imports of lamb from the reciprocal tariff requirement. While today’s modification did remove the 10% reciprocal tariff on imports of beef and beef products from Brazil, it did not remove the 40% tariff the president later imposed on imports from Brazil, including imports of beef and beef products, in his executive order of July 30, 2025.
Just a week ago, on Nov. 7, President Trump announced that he had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to immediately begin an investigation into possible anticompetitive practices by the highly concentrated meatpacking industry.
Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, the nation’s largest cattle association that exclusively represents cattle farmers and ranchers, issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s removal of the 10% reciprocal tariffs on beef and beef products:
“We fully supported President Trump’s imposition of reciprocal tariffs in April and the additional 40% tariff later imposed on Brazil as important first steps in reducing the United States’ debilitating beef and cattle trade deficit and our nation’s growing dependency on foreign countries for such an important staple as beef. In fact, we’ve been asking the president for more tariffs and stricter import limits so our beleaguered domestic industry can rebuild and expand.
“The president’s executive order explains his action was prompted in part by a concern that the domestic cattle industry lacks the capacity to produce enough beef to meet domestic demand. Unfortunately, the president’s concern is valid.
“Decades of failed trade policy and lack of enforcement of antitrust and fair competition laws fueled the monopolization of our industry by a handful of meatpackers, resulting in the dismantling of the domestic cattle industry’s production capacity. Unprotected from monopolistic excesses, consumers have been paying inflated prices for beef since at least 2017, and they were doing so while cattle prices were falling. A recent drought exacerbated our industry’s weakened condition, creating a severe supply scarcity while consumer beef demand remained strong. The chasm between supply and demand became so unbalanced that cattle prices broke free from their monopoly-induced restraints and started chasing beef prices upward.
“And, now, consumers are paying the highest nominal prices in history for beef, and cattle producers are receiving the highest nominal prices for cattle – prices sorely needed to help them recover from years of depressed prices that have driven hundreds of thousands of domestic cattle farmers and ranchers out of business.
“We now face a serious dilemma. Excessive beef imports are used by the monopolistic meatpackers, in combination with their unfair market practices, to drive cattle producers out of business and displace domestic beef production. We are already overly dependent on imports to meet domestic beef demand. Last year our shortfall in domestic beef production was a near record of about 3.2 billion pounds.
“The solution must be to rebuild and expand our diminished cattle industry so it can begin meeting our national security objective of achieving self-reliance in beef production. To accomplish this, the monopolistic control of our cattle industry by the handful of global meatpackers must cease, and to that end we strongly support the president’s meatpacker investigation. Free from monopolistic control, our industry will begin to rebuild, and to foster its expansion we must begin managing imports so they don’t undermine our industry’s growth.
“We pledge to work with President Trump and his administration to restore competition to our diminished U.S. cattle industry so cattle producers and consumers alike can once again be confident that prices for cattle and beef are determined by competitive market forces, not monopoly power and excessive import penetration by foreign beef that is not even labeled as to its country of origin.”
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Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) is the largest producer-only cattle trade association in the United States. It is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle and sheep industries. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or call 406-252-2516.