President Trump’s move to strengthen the US import of beef from Argentina Cutting costs for consumers may have less of an effect than the White House hopes, experts say.

The executive ordersigned by Mr. Trump on Friday as part of a new trade deal between the two countries, allows Argentina to export an additional 80,000 metric tons of beef to the U.S. duty-free this year, according to the Trump administration. The directive refers to the import of lean beef offal used for the production of ground beef.

“As president of the United States, I have a responsibility to ensure that hard-working Americans can afford to feed themselves and their families,” Mr. Trump said in the order.

But David Ortega, a food economist and professor at Michigan State University, told CBS News that the 80,000 tons of beef represented just 0.6% of the total U.S. beef supply — too little to move prices, he said.

“We’re talking about less than 1% of the supply,” Ortega said. “I wouldn’t expect it to have a big impact on these prices. Now, it doesn’t hurt, but we’re not talking about large volumes that we’re importing that would immediately suppress prices.”

According to the data, the US produced almost 27 billion pounds of beef in 2024 data from the US Department of Agriculture divided into Statistics.

Which raised beef prices

The average price of U.S. ground beef reached $6.69 a pound in December, up 19% from a year ago, according to data data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Five years ago, consumers could buy a pound of ground beef for $3.95.

The biggest factor behind the spike in beef prices: extreme weather conditions that have reduced the country’s cattle supply. Droughtsincluding the recent bout of dry weather in 2022 that hit beef-producing states, made it difficult for farmers to grow crops needed for feedstock and forced many ranchers to sell their beef cows. The wildfires also devastated grasslands used for grazing livestock, according to the White House.

In contrast, the price of chicken and eggs, which rose sharply in 2022 bird flu outbreak which required the destruction of millions of birds, was recently dipped, St. Louis Fed figures show.

“While prices for other proteins such as eggs, pork and chicken have fallen in recent months, beef prices remain high,” an Agriculture Department spokesman said in an email. “This is due to a perfect storm of a sustained increase in consumer demand for beef, coupled with a prolonged reduction in live cattle supply.”

The nation’s cattle supply was 27.6 million on Jan. 1, down 1% from a year earlier, according to the USDA data. Overall, the total number of U.S. cattle is at a 75-year low.

ua information sheet last week, the White House acknowledged the supply challenges facing the US

“President Trump is responding to market challenges and ensuring an abundance of ground beef for American families at affordable prices by taking action on multiple fronts.”

So what would cut costs?

Derrell Peel, a professor in Oklahoma State University’s department of agricultural economics, also expressed skepticism that the executive order will help lower costs for domestic consumers, saying there is “nothing the administration can do in the short term to lower U.S. beef prices.”

That’s because the key to lowering prices will be rebuilding the livestock supply, a process that will likely take several years, Peel explained. Part of that effort will require saving female cows, known as heifers, for breeding rather than killing them to meet consumer demand for beef, Peel noted.

“We’ve got record high cattle prices and we’re going to continue with them until we go up again,” he said.