Poor messaging, bad timing for American farmers

Dairy and beef producers are concerned about both the timing and messaging of President Donald J. Trump’s announcement that creates a 90-day window for duty-free beef imports.

“It’s not necessarily the imports that scream red flags to me, it’s the messaging,” said Derek Orth, a Grant County dairy farmer. “It’s putting a price point on this imported beef that will decrease the value of domestically raised beef, that’s what probably bugs me the most.”

Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation president Brad Olson expressed concerns for how the timing will impact U.S. farmers, especially the dairy farmers of Wisconsin.

“The sale of cattle, of dairy-beef cross calves and cull cows, is the only thing that has kept a lot of dairy farms in business the last couple of years,” Olson said. “Those farms are literally sitting on the edge right now…If you start to cut back what those calves and cull cows are worth, you’re taking a lot of their potential income away.”

The official presidential proclamation, titled “Further Ensuring Affordable Beef for the American Consumer,” issued Aug. 26, following a Truth Social post Aug. 21, creates a 90-day window that began Sept. 1, allowing for 100,000 metric tons of foreign beef per month to come into the country, duty-free, for the next three months. The proclamation applies only to lean beef trimmings and is to be sold at a 25% discount from the going import price.

With the U.S. cattle herd at a 75-year low, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had already projected record-high beef imports for 2026, with an 18% increase over 2025, prior to Trump’s announcement.

In his Truth Social post, Trump said, “I concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families. This deal will reduce prices for Americans, while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again.”

Olson said the proclamation is short-sighted, missing its mark.

“How will they track that beef that’s to be sold for 25% less when it gets here and potentially gets mixed with local beef from across the nation?” Olson asked. “Unfortunately, it’s a slippery slope that does not necessarily have an ending because it’s just going to be short-lived, with three months’ worth of it. We’re not going to rebuild our cattle herd in three months, so then what happens? It’s not good for the consumer, and it’s certainly not good for the farmer.”

Orth, who milks 250 cows near Lancaster, Wisconsin, questions the motive behind the announcement.

“It makes me wonder if it is just kind of a publicity thing,” Orth said. “An attempt to placate voters, and not an attempt at saving American farmers and ranchers, especially as it undercuts the value of our product.”

Two full weeks since the original announcement, Rocky Olsen, co-owner of Premier Livestock and Auction in Withee, Wisconsin, said his initial fears of how markets would react have been confirmed.

“It came fast and it’s substantial,” Olsen said. “As far as market cows and fed cattle, we’re talking $400-$600 a head lower. We’re seeing nearly the same thing in our baby calves.”

Olsen voiced frustration at how the announcement impacted market confidence, while the market itself was virtually unchanged.

“It didn’t change the cattle market,” Olsen said. “Our supply situation did not change overnight. It’s still historically tight, the lowest cattle numbers in history. It’s just the words that the government chooses to talk about can really harm people.”

Olsen said as bad as the messaging was, the timing is worse.

“This couldn’t have come at a worse time of year,” Olsen said. “This is when we’re getting ready to start our fall runs for the people that only get to sell one time a year. You just took $300-400 a head away from them on a feeder calf.”

Orth said markets have impacted how he manages his herd of Jerseys.

“Five years ago, most of our cull cows brought like $500 and now they’re bring $1,200-$1,400,” Orth said. “I cull a lot more aggressively now; there just isn’t the margin to give them any grace.”

Orth has been using beef on the lower end of his herd for more than a dozen years to add value to his Jersey calves. As calf prices have climbed, he has increased the percentage of beef semen he uses. Recently, he has been using Montbéliarde as a dairy cross to give options for both beef calf and dairy springer markets.

“I had an all-black Jersey-Holstein bull calf that brought $1,500,” Orth said. “It was insane, but those calves have become vital to my bottom line.”

County fair commitments kept Orth from sending a load of cull cows before the announcement was made.

“I sent nine cows the week after the initial announcement,” Orth said. “Based on what I was getting before, I was expecting over $10,000 and the check came for $8,400.”

Brad Olson said Orth’s situation is not the exception, but the rule.

“This is just not a good path to be on,” Olson said. “This program is going to drive domestic markets down, and I’m not certain it will have any impact at the consumer level. I don’t think it will help grow the herd, either. It actually runs the risk of farmers getting rid of more of those replacements now, selling them for what they can get rather than risk a greater loss in the future.”

Rocky Olsen said the volume of cattle sold at Premier has not deviated greatly.

“Cattle need to move, people have bills to pay,” Olsen said. “I’m sure there is some holdback, but that’s where producer confidence comes in — when it drops, they’re always afraid it’s going to get lower. So they sell cattle disappointed, but they sell because they need to pay bills. The dairy farmers need these calf and market cow checks to survive the milk prices. Taking that income away from them, I think the drop in the value of cattle is going to force more people out of the dairy business.”

While the dairy market has been relatively unaffected immediately, Olsen is concerned that impact will eventually hit.

“The beef market was propping up the dairy cattle market because you could make it work,” Olsen said. “You could sell a big, fat cow for $2,500-$3,000 and turn around and buy a good springer for $3,500-$4,000 and get the calf out of her. The numbers worked but I would say right now, it’s going to just beat them up.”

Olsen believes the only group that will see a benefit is the processors.

“We need to consider that this is going to be lower-quality beef,” Olsen said. “There’s a place for it, but I don’t think the benefit is going to reach the consumer. Right now we’re seeing box-beef prices almost as high as we were at the highest peak, so where is the savings coming up? The only one that’s going to make the money is going to be the middleman and the packer.”

Brad Olson said he believes growing the country’s reliance on foreign food production, rather than supporting profitable markets for U.S. farmers is a concern of national security.

“We’ve seen a 122% increase in imported beef over the 5-year average,” Olson said. “Food security is national security. The more food we import — especially the food we can grow domestically — the less secure we are, as a nation. We cannot afford to destroy a market and drive more of our farmers and ranchers out of business.”