Trump's plan to lower beef prices could lose him ranchers, a normally solid GOP voting bloc

If you’ve gone to a steakhouse lately, you know: Beef prices are sky high.

So, President Donald Trump proposed a solution — a plan to remove tariffs from 300,000 metric tons of imported beef and sell it at a discount.

The problem is, American ranchers are not happy about it, and they are normally reliable Republican constituency. Now, this frustration from voters is trickling down to GOP candidates on the ballot this November, including in Arizona.

Samuel Benson wrote the story for Politico, and he joined The Show to talk about it.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Sam. Thanks for coming on.

SAMUEL BENSON: Hey, good morning. Thank you for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: So, just how high are beef prices right now? Like, what’s behind that trend to begin with?

SAMUEL BENSON: Well, if you look at the tracking the federal government does of any commodity prices, beef prices are as high as they’ve ever been on record. They’re almost twice as high as they were during Trump’s first term — excuse me — in 2016 to 2017. And so everyone feels it when you go to the grocery store and you try and, you know, buy ground beef or steak or whatever, you’re seeing the prices here.

So the president knew that this could be a political liability going into the midterm elections in the fall, and his proposal was essentially to provide, as you mentioned, an opportunity for imported beef to come into the country without tariffs and at a 25% discount. And the idea was that this would drive down prices. What I don’t think he perhaps didn’t expect, or the immediate backlash was, that a lot of the Republicans in farm states are the ones producing, you know, domestic beef, are being undercut here and there’s been some real backlash.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So let’s talk about that, because you talked to ranchers in some farm states, like you say, including a cattle rancher in southern Arizona here. What did these folks have to say? What are they upset about here?

SAMUEL BENSON: Well, the ranching industry in the United States has been facing tough times for a number of years. In addition to what agriculture across the board is feeling right now with high fertilizer prices, high fuel prices, so their input costs are through the roof, ranchers are also dealing with kind of really low herd sizes. And so there’s not a lot of cattle that are being run comparatively with past years. And so they’re already in this process where they’re trying to rebuild their herds. That means that you don’t want to kill your cattle, right? You want to just grow up your herd, but that means that you’re not getting profits off of selling beef.

So they were already kind of in this tough situation, and they would like to see, you know, the White House and the administration prop up the domestic beef industry in order to help rebuild the herd instead of seeing it, you know, perhaps undercut by imports. And so when folks say, you know, they acknowledge that the president’s plan was probably to bring down the costs, but the best way we can do that is to bring down the input costs. Bring down the cost of fuel, bring down the cost of fertilizer and feed, and that’s going to make life a lot easier for these ranchers.

LAUREN GILGER: You mentioned fuel. That is a big pressure point, not just for cattle ranchers, but for farmers across the country right now, right?

SAMUEL BENSON: Yeah, diesel prices also are skyrocketing across the country. They’re nearing $7 a gallon, which is just unfathomable. We’re less than six weeks until the election. Not for ranchers, but for farmers that have row crops, you’re going to go into harvest season now, so you’re going to be filling up your diesel tanks. And this is really the worst possible time to have a diesel crisis.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So let's talk about the political implications here then, Samuel. Like, this is becoming a campaign issue for some Republicans on the ballot. Are they distancing themselves from the president on this issue?

SAMUEL BENSON: Yeah, a lot of battleground Republicans aren’t shy in saying that they’re very upset with the prices of beef and specifically with this plan. They think it, you know, it undercuts domestic industry. And so I’m most interested in kind of the four Senate races in the Heartland: in Texas, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. And by happenstance, those happen to be the four states with the largest cattle herds. So these are states that have a lot of ranchers, a lot of people that work in the beef and meat industry.

And they were disappointed. So you have Republican incumbents or candidates running in those states, and almost all of them have been pretty explicit in saying they oppose the plan, and they would like to see the president, you know, change his mind. And we had reporting yesterday at Politico — my colleague Meredith Lee Hill scooped that there are some White House officials that are exploring whether to cut back on this, to reverse the plan, recognizing that it’s a real political liability only weeks before a key election.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And you write that this sort of plays into a larger narrative this election cycle in kind of rural America that Trump and the GOP have turned their backs on this part of the country that has been solidly supportive of the president for so long. This is a narrative I think we’re seeing play out in southern Arizona in a tight congressional race here, but another kind of races around the country as well.

SAMUEL BENSON: Yeah, I mean, there’s been a building farm crisis in rural America for some time. I mean, the costs are just getting unsustainable. You see thousands of family farms shutter every year. And so we thought this would be a huge issue in 2018, in 2020, in the 2022 midterms, and every year rural America ends up coming out for Republicans. It’s been that way for decades and we haven’t seen any real break.

But there are signs, I think, that this cycle, folks in red states think there could be a change. Those states that I mentioned, including Iowa and Nebraska, I think are great examples of this, where you have some statewide candidates and congressional candidates who are Democrats or independents that are getting a lot of support in ways that we may not have seen before. I think Kansas is the same.

And so we’ll know, you know, better in six weeks whether there is any real political ramification for Republicans, or if we see rural voters stick with them like they have in past cycles. But the fact that there’s this much consternation over a single policy effort that’s having real-world impacts for Republican voters, I think is significant.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And does this, you think, give Democrats, even in some of those conservative states and in tighter races like we’re seeing here in Arizona, some rare openings that they, you know, might be able to take advantage of in different ways?

SAMUEL BENSON: Yeah, and we’ve already seen some of them take advantage of this. An example that I mentioned in the piece is in Nebraska, where Dan Osborn, an independent running against the Republican Pete Ricketts, is already up on air with an ad, you know, talking about this policy specifically. You know, he holds up ground beef from Argentina and ground beef from Nebraska and says, “What would you rather have?” Talks about the prices and how this is undercutting ranchers.

And so I wouldn’t be surprised if that becomes part of the closing message in other states. And the reason why is because, one, it’s so unpopular, and two, cost of living and the economy are going to be the number one issue deciding who wins this year’s election. And this plays right into that.

LAUREN GILGER: Plays right into that. All right, Samuel Benson with Politico joining us. Thanks so much, appreciate you coming back on the show.

SAMUEL BENSON: Of course. Thank you.