For Immediate Release: April 30, 2025
Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard
Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com
Please find below R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary that discusses how excessive imports have disrupted our historical cattle cycle and are preventing the rebuilding of the cow/calf sector of our cattle industry. It is in three formats: written, audio and video. Anyone is welcome to use it for broadcasting or reporting.
Thrive or Just Survive?
Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA
Beef imports into the United States market have exploded over the past two years, and no one in the industry wants to say anything about it. Beef imports for the entire eight-year period from 2015 through 2022 averaged 266 million pounds per month, but for the two-year period from 2023 through February of this year, they averaged 359 million pounds per month. That’s a monthly average increase of 94 million pounds during the past two years – a 35% increase.
This should be raising all kinds of red flags, and here’s why.
The U.S. cattle industry is shrinking fast–in terms of the number of cow/calf producers and the number of mother cows in our national herd–and it’s been shrinking for decades. We need to reverse this alarming contraction, or we risk losing the high level of self-sufficiency in beef production that America needs to maintain food security, which, of course, is national security.
But how in the world do we incentivize the rebuilding of our domestic mother cow herd and the return of more farmers and ranchers to the cow/calf sector of our industry? Well, it used to happen quite naturally, in accordance with the natural law of supply and demand. We called it the cattle cycle.
When demand for beef was strong, cattle prices increased to a price point that encouraged U.S. cow/calf producers to expand their herds and new entrants to join the industry. Then, when the supply of beef exceeded demand, prices subsided and cow/calf producers culled their herds more heavily, resulting in a national herd liquidation. This expansion and liquidation used to last a total of about 10-12 years, with the expansion phase lasting much longer than the liquidation phase. Typically, the herd would expand for six to seven years and then liquidate for three to four years. The cycle would start anew after the third or fourth year of liquidation.
The natural cattle cycle worked because, by design, it was based on domestic cattle and beef. It was somewhat of a closed system because, not too long ago, Americans understood the national security implications of becoming dependent on foreign supply chains for food. But then globalization came along, and the cattle cycle that once served us well has all but disappeared.
The last normal cattle cycle ended in the early 1980s, and ever since, the liquidation phases of the cattle cycle have lasted about twice as long as normal. Our herd liquidated for eight years in the 1980s, eight years in the mid-1990s, six years in the mid-2000s, and the herd has now been liquidating for another six years beginning in the late 2010s.
The reason for this cattle cycle disruption is clear. After we jumped headlong into globalization, when the natural law of supply and demand triggered higher domestic cattle prices due to tighter supplies and the price point for cattle reached a level that incentivized domestic herd expansion, global importers would reach outside our closed system to import cattle and beef from around the world to keep our domestic supplies high, thus causing domestic cattle prices to fall prematurely and causing cow/calf producers to exit the industry in droves.
So today’s question for U.S. cow/calf producers and family-scale feeders alike is: Do you want to thrive or just survive?
If all you want to do is survive a while longer, then don’t change a thing—stay the course and perhaps pick around the edges to make tax adjustments or ask for the government to grant you an insurance policy.
But if you want to thrive, then we’ve got real work to do.
First, we need to educate our neighbors and Washington decision-makers on the damage that excessive imports are causing our industry. For example, that average monthly increase of 94 million pounds of imported beef alone beginning in 2023 is the equivalent of about 159,000 domestic cattle. If that record volume of imports persists through 2025, then imports will displace the opportunity for U.S. cow/calf producers to add almost 2 million mother cows to the U.S. herd this year. And every head of live cattle imported from Canada and Mexico likewise displaces an equal number of domestic mother cows.
Globalization has done nothing except provide global importers with more access to price-depressing and industry-destroying imports.
Second, we need Washington decision-makers to limit the volume of imported beef and cattle using both tariffs and tariff-rate quotas so our natural cattle cycle can do what it used to do: incentivize cow/calf producers to invest in and rebuild our shrunken domestic supply chain.
Urge your members of Congress to support R-CALF USA’s request for tariffs and tariff-rate quotas on beef and cattle that we submitted to the U.S. Department of Commerce in March.
We made our request under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
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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.