Grassley joins bipartisan criticism of Trump suggestion that US should import more beef from Argentina
WASHINGTON — Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has joined bipartisan criticism of President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the United States should be importing more beef from Argentina as a way to address higher prices.
Beef prices are up by more than 50% over the past five years, as ranchers have their smallest herds in 60 years as they’ve dealt with drought and higher input costs.
Grassley says importing from Argentina is not going to improve the situation for US farmers. “This would damage the incentives for US cattlemen to raise more beef, and in the words of the president, repeating what you hear him say so often, the message to the president is pretty simple. Undercutting American beef is not putting America first. I don’t want to argue with the president’s ‘America First’ agenda, but you can’t undercut beef and consider that being America first.”
Grassley says he and other senators probably have not convinced Trump to take back his stance on Argentine beef imports. “We know that he loves farmers, and it’s not a way to show love by the way the cattle market went down so much last Thursday and Friday. It’s back a little bit now, I don’t know if it’s back all the way, but what presidents say effects the markets, and he needs to concentrate on the things that were very positive that were announced on Tuesday by the Secretary of Agriculture, and he ought to tweet about it.”
The US Department of Agriculture on Wednesday rolled out a plan to help strengthen the cattle industry, saying the department will expedite deregulatory reforms, boost processing capacity, and work across the government to fix longstanding common-sense barriers for ranchers.
