For Immediate Release: October 13, 2025
Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard
Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com
This segment was first issued for radio on Oct. 7, 2025. Please find below R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary that discusses the letter signed by R-CALF USA and dozens of business groups asking President Trump to rigorously enforce U.S. antitrust laws. It is in three formats: written, audio and video. Anyone is welcome to use it for broadcasting or reporting.
Antitrust Enforcement Is the Second Key
Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA
For many years, we’ve been informing Congress and all the administrations that the U.S. cattle and sheep industries have long suffered from two misguided national policies: globalization and concentration.
Globalization has not only increased our nation’s dependence on foreign countries for our food and food sources – think imports of both beef and cattle – but it has also given global corporations the tools they need to manipulate domestic supply and demand – think of imports as direct product substitutes for both domestic cattle supplies and domestic beef supplies.
Concentration has created an oligopoly in the most important markets to both the cattle and sheep industries. Those are the cash markets where both slaughter-ready cattle and lambs are sold to but a handful of global meatpackers.
The solution to address globalization includes tariff rate quotas (which are limits placed on import volumes), tariffs (which offset the artificial price advantage enjoyed by imports), and mandatory country of origin labeling, or MCOOL (which empowers consumers to decide where the global meatpackers must source their beef and cattle to satisfy domestic demand).
We’re now seeing significant movement toward these solutions. The Trump administration recently imposed meaningful tariffs on Brazilian beef imports, and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office is currently weighing tariff rate quotas and tariffs for other countries, while Congress has before it the American Beef Labeling Act that would codify MCOOL in U.S. law.
Now what is needed is a renewed focus on antitrust enforcement to wrest control of the marketplace out of the hands of the market-dominating global packers and processors.
To this end, R-CALF USA recently joined a letter to President Trump urging him to aggressively enforce U.S. antitrust laws to restore competition for domestic industries and consumers. The letter was signed by dozens of other business groups and was circulated by the Main Street Competition Coalition, of which R-CALF USA is a coalition member.
The timing of the pro-antitrust enforcement letter coincided with the U.S. Senate hearing in which U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was scheduled to appear as a witness. The objective was to focus that hearing’s attention on the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and on the question of whether the division will aggressively enforce our U.S. antitrust laws.
In late September, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was going to partner with the U.S. Department of Justice so the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the USDA “can take a hard look and scrutinize competitive conditions in the agricultural marketplace, including antitrust enforcement that promotes free market competition.
This is welcome news, even though the agencies will likely first focus on the burdens caused by high and volatile input costs – such as feed, fertilizer and fuel.
Now we know that the USDA and the Antitrust Division of the DOJ initiated an investigation into the buying conduct of the global beef packers during the protein shortages that occurred following the COVID pandemic in 2020. We also know that several state attorneys general joined in that investigation.
We believe that investigation is ongoing, but we don’t know for certain. If it is ongoing, we hope it will result in a rigorous enforcement action against the global packers’ exercise of abusive market power.
Private antitrust enforcement actions against dominant meatpackers and processors have been underway for several years, including the class-action Cattle Antitrust Litigation that we initiated in early 2019, the Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation and the pork price-fixing case. So far, these combined cases have resulted in settlements totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, and most of these cases, including the cattle litigation case, are still moving forward.
All this to say that we must continue addressing the decades-worth of failed trade policies that facilitated the ruinous globalization that shrank both our domestic cattle and sheep industries. And we must aggressively enforce our antitrust laws and the Packers and Stockyards Act, which is a combination antitrust and fair competition law, if we are to begin rebuilding and expanding our domestic cattle and sheep industries.
We hope everyone will pick up the phone and call their congressional delegations to urge them to support tariffs and tariff rate quotas to save our domestic cattle and sheep industries; to support MCOOL to empower consumers to decide where they want their beef produced; and to support strong antitrust and Packers and Stockyards Act enforcement to restore competition to our livestock and meat markets.
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R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary educates and informs both consumers and producers about timely issues important to the U.S. cattle and sheep industries and rural America.
Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) is the largest producer-only 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.