Name: ‘It’s misguided’: Trump’s beef deal with Argentina angers America’s struggling farmers
Uploaded: 2025-10-24T01:43:16.000Z
Duration: 6 min 56 s
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President Trump's plan to buy more beef from Argentina is getting seared by American cattle ranchers.

A White House official telling CNN the administration plans to let more beef from Argentina onto the shelves in American stores to help lower record prices on beef here in the US and now President Trump is facing backlash from US Cattle ranchers to Republican farm state lawmakers.

Here's White House press secretary Caroline Levitt responding.

The President loves our ranchers and he also loves American consumers.

So the immediate solution to the problem of the rising cost of beef, the President wants to bring that down as we have to increase our supply.

And so that's what he's doing with respect to these imports.

He is the president of the National Cattleman's Beef Association.

Buck, thank you so much for being with us.

He says American ranchers, quote, have to get their prices down.

How is that landing with cattle ranchers?

Well, it's deeply concerning to all the producers out here because we have spent generations improving the genetics and, and

the processes that we use and the feed that we use and so forth to where we produce the best and most high quality product ever here.

And the price is up because the herd is down.

And so supply, more supply will cause the price to go down.

However, the problem is, as the President talks about this, his rhetoric is heard by our markets, like our futures markets, and

they respond immediately and violently, which impacts us directly and immediately, but

has no impact on the retail, you know, what the, what the consumer buys.

We understand what he's trying to do, but

it's misguided because it's hurting us and not helping the consumer.

It will take a long time for the price to come down in the grocery store.

What can cattle ranchers do to get the price down?

As you do have this issue with herds being small.

The herd is small because of lack of feed, drought, things like that, input costs going up.

And part of it, a lot of it, quite a bit, is uncertainty.

And uncertainty comes from things like overregulation and also uncertainty with the markets, which of course we're talking about happening with the President's rhetoric.

And so the market will cause the herd to be rebuilt and it is by high prices.

The old saying in the markets are high prices are the cure for high prices is high prices.

We want it to occur naturally, not be manipulated.

Do you see consumers turning away from beef?

There's some reporting that demand has plateaued as we've seen record high prices.

what I see and hear from the people that are is that the demand remains strong.

We all know you can only go up so far, and

cattlemen are professional warriors and we worry about that, of course.

But the demand for our product, because of what I was saying earlier, the quality of it so far has remained very, very strong.

There are other proteins that they can choose from, and yet they continue to buy ours.

They're not going to let me get away with something else, I'll tell you that.

What policies would you like to see pursued instead?

There are things that they can do and could do immediately.

We have a bad pest making its way through Mexico that's going to get here, we're not sure when, but

And that's going to add to making our supply low.

And it also adds to the uncertainty I mentioned.

And we're very grateful that the administration and Secretary Rollins has committed to a lot of money for a facility to combat that in South Texas that was talked about in August.

So turning some dirt and getting some work going on, that would be very good.

We've got regulations like the Endangered Species act, and

we've got gray wolf that is now killing lots of calves, black vulture, things of that nature that could be delisted that would help us and just removing some of the uncertainty.

The uncertainty of the market is the big one.

And you know, we notice in, in the president's statement, he, he says he loves cattle ranchers and he's enjoyed a relationship.

So have cattle ranchers where they have felt, I think, close to the president and taken care of by his policies.

Are they feeling a little rocked by this?

How are they describing this Argentina beef incident and what it has them thinking?

what I hear from people is rocked is probably a good word for it.

There's a noble purpose here, but the market is taking care of this as we speak.

it will take time for the actual price to the consumer to go down.

And so we know and we believe he loves us.

My family loves President Trump, and I am supportive of him.

This is a misguided idea that we hope he will back away from, focus on those other things and let this market take care of this itself.

And remember that the people have choices with protein.

Buck Wehrbein, it's great to speak with you.

Thank you so much for telling us how things are going with the cattle ranchers.