Driving around his farm in a four-wheeler, Scott Birker warned that his cattle were in a bad mood."They're a little grumpy with me right now," he said.When asked why, he said matter-of-factly: "We just got done weaning." Birker should know his herd well, given that he's been raising beef cattle outside the Eastern Iowa town of Garrison since 2001.His operation has about 150 "mama cows" and sells feeder calves, as well as some cattle for meat.
And Birker is also the northeast regional vice president for the Iowa Cattlemen's Association.All of which is to say that since August, when Trump announced that his administration would raise the quota on beef imported under lower tariffs – temporarily suspending tariffs on up to 300,000 metric tons of imported beef – Birker knows it when he says: that hurt people."That surprise, with a very volatile market already, with a tight supply, hurts us really, really fast and really, really hard," Birker said.It's not that raising beef cattle was easy before that new import policy.Margins are always tight, says Zach Raff, incoming livestock economist at Iowa State University.
But there have also been other challenges – for example, drought in much of the western U.S.made hay much more expensive and shrank the nation's beef herd."The beef herd size is at an all time low – a 75-year-low," said Raff.
"So you couple that with very strong demand.And that's going to make prices what you see at the store right now."Ground beef currently costs around $6.80 a pound – a fact of which the Trump administration is keenly aware.
But the administration's attempts to bring those prices down have backfired politically and possibly economically..Multiple Trump administration policies have made life tougher for beef producers.Last year, amid the trade war between the two countries, China cut its US beef purchases.
In February, Trump signed an executive order to subject some Argentinian beef to fewer tariffs.And in August, he signed the e...