Trump Just Pissed Off All His MAGA Ranchers with a Flood of Cheap, Foreign Beef

Leave it to Donald John Trump to make a hasty decision designed to buy a few more midterm votes, only to end up stabbing some of his own most ardent supporters in the back at the same time. You’ve got to hand it to the guy: Our President has a keen sense of when he can undo one of his promises to constituents at exactly the right time to inflict the most pain on some particular corner of the MAGA world. And we’re not just talking about his embrace of carcinogenic weedkillers like glyphosate to spite RFK Jr. either, but even his attempts to (temporarily and cynically) bring down retail prices at the American dinner table. The man is probably delusional enough to think he would be hailed by his supporters as a hero for today’s unexpected announcement that the U.S. would be dropping tariffs on beef imports, and selling newly imported beef below market value. Instead, he pissed off a vast constellation of GOP ranchers and farmers, and the congresspeople who represent them. Fun!

Of course, in classic Trump fashion, there’s almost no way to tell what any of this shit genuinely means. He merely blasted out in the course of a Truth Social bender that the country would allow an additional 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported into the U.S. in the next 90 days without the import tariffs that beef is now facing. A White House official also told The New York Times that Trump had “secured a deal with foreign beef exporters to provide a 25% discount.” The White House declined to actually give details or explain where we would be buying all this foreign beef from, but it wouldn’t be Canada or Mexico, as they already send their beef to the U.S. without tariffs thanks to free trade agreements. That leaves the likes of Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay, which all send more than 100,000 metric tons of beef to the U.S. in a typical year.

You know who doesn’t love a flood of cheap, foreign beef, though? The Americans who have spent decades attempting to raise and make a profit off American beef, and those ranchers are typically a veeery Trumpy voting bloc. I think the tenor of the response is well conveyed by this amusing Twitter post from Wyoming’s Meriwether Farms, a place so Trumpy its bio is “MAKE BEEF AMERICAN AGAIN,” which responded with just one word: “Betrayal.”

Betrayal pic.twitter.com/NqfH7yImjL

— Meriwether Farms (@MeriwetherFarms) August 21, 2026

As I type this, denouncements of Trump are flying in from all over the internet, but I’m struck by just how many of them are from dyed-in-the-wool MAGA supporters in the farming industry, who don’t usually dare to voice this kind of anti-Trump sentiment. Amanda Radke, whose Twitter bio calls her a “ranch mom fighting for FAITH, FAMILY, FREEDOM & FARMING,” had this to say for example: “This was very difficult to read this morning from President Trump. Frustrated and disappointed is an understatement.”

Trump even seemingly managed to lose Republican Montana Rep. Troy Downing, a member of Congress who until now has been very enthusiastic about defending all of the previous inflation and price pain of the second Trump regime. Artificially cheap foreign beef, though, is seemingly a bridge too far, given that it actually affects Downing’s rancher constituents, and he is up for reelection in the 2026 midterm elections.

I understand the President taking action to lower prices at the grocery store, but it cannot happen on the backs of our ranchers.

Montana producers cannot be asked to absorb the cost. We must protect our ranchers and strengthen the American cattle herd so American beef remains… https://t.co/k2hIYRax1C

— Congressman Troy Downing (@RepTroyDowning) August 21, 2026

Even the broader American beef industry has also condemned Trump’s action here, with Colin Woodall, the chief executive of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association saying the following: “While America’s cattle producers share the goal of keeping groceries affordable for consumers, flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd. Today’s announcement and other market interventions throw cold water on the prospect of herd expansion and sacrifices long-term stability for short-term messaging.”

Woodall is referring in particular to the absolute joke of the “90 day” period in Trump’s statement, an obviously calculated ploy to attempt to briefly bring down prices on MAGA’s #1 wish list item (BEEEEEF) until after the midterm elections, under the guise that doing so will somehow allow the U.S. beef herd to replenish itself in that short time. This is, suffice to say, totally ludicrous. Beyond the fact that it takes about 2 years to actually raise a beef cow, flooding the market with foreign beef being sold below market value can only have the effect of decreasing the price of beef cows currently being sold by American ranchers. That in turn disincentivizes those ranchers from even attempting to increase the size of beef herds, given that they’re losing money on every cow. There’s effectively no way that Trump’s move, in other words, could actually increase the U.S.-made beef supply. But you know MAGA; they love their quick, temporary fixes that don’t actually fix much bigger problems.

That beef supply, meanwhile, is at 75-year lows (86 million head) for a bevy of different reasons, ranging from severe, persistent droughts in numerous cattle-producing areas, or the high costs of fuel, fertilizer and equipment used in powering the beef trade. Practically everything has been against American beef ranchers, in fact, including allegations that the largest national beef packers had been illegally coordinating through the 2010s to both restrict beef supplies and jack up prices for consumers, to extract the maximum profit from each cow for the middle-men. Oh, and now the beef herd is also threatened by the return of the parasitic New World Screwworm fly, which is back in the U.S. after we had successfully kept it trapped in Central America for 60 years via sterile fly breeding programs. Said fly, beyond being incredibly damaging for cows, has also now put thousands of shelter dogs and cats in Texas at threat of euthanasia due to the risks of potentially moving infected animals and spreading the screwworm.

We close the only way we possible could: With Trump telling his beloved ranchers to go pound sand.

Reporter: Your move on beef imports is upsetting ranchers.

Trump: We want to get the beef prices down so we will get them down a little bit. That is what people want, that is what the voters want, and that is what I want. The ranchers are great. They are my people. I love the… pic.twitter.com/GGEVz9qj46

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 21, 2026