SINCE 2020 the price of beef in America’s shops has soared by around 70%, more than twice the general inflation rate.
Meatpackers, who buy cattle from farmers and turn steers into beef, “are a nasty monopoly”, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social last month. Americans are disgruntled, and the president knows whom to blame: the middlemen.
Instead, on August 31st his agriculture secretary announced the Ranchers First Initiative, which makes it easier for farmers to bypass middlemen by processing their own meat, and also provides financial support to small slaughterhouses.
To track the trends shaping commerce, industry and technology,sign up to “ The Bottom Line ”, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter on global business. But they will keep bleeding—and beef will stay pricey—until ranchers rebuild their herds. Mr Trump is reluctant to say so: after all, many of them voted for him. None of this will make much of a difference to prices, argues David Anderson of Texas A&M University: “The numbers would be so small…it wouldn’t change the broader market at all. American consumers hoping for some relief may be waiting until the cows come home.
Shares in Tyson, the largest, have tumbled by 40% since 2021—and by 7% since it cut its earnings forecast on September 3rd. It now expects its beef business, which brings in 40% of revenue, to lose as much as $775m this year. Trouble in the division has dragged the company’s overall operating margin down from 8.5% in 2021 to 2.6%. JBS, which is Brazilian, has said its North American business lost $427m in the first half of 2026. Since 2020 America’s herd has shrunk by nearly a tenth, to its smallest since 1951, and the price of a steer has risen by 120%.
Yet despite record beef prices, the “Big Processors”, as Mr Trump calls them, are not thriving. Meatpackers are thus paying more than ever to fill their slaughterhouses. But on the other side, retail prices have not kept up. As beef has become dearer, shoppers have turned to chicken, the price of which has remained stable, adjusting for inflation (see chart).
