President Trump is reportedly seeking options to provide support to the beef industry. According to reports published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture is considering providing up to $500 million in aid to small and mid-sized meatpacking companies.
The proposed aid is intended to help smaller manufacturers within the industry combat losses as beef prices reach record highs. Industry experts estimate that smaller producers are losing as much as $300 per head of cattle due to soaring prices and a lower domestic cattle supply, which is at its lowest level since 1951.
Independent manufacturers have been hit particularly hard by rising prices, which have climbed steadily since 2021. The rising prices are partially due to ranchers reducing cattle herds following the pandemic.
According to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the administration wants to take “targeted action to preserve the independent processing capacity that ranchers rely on.” Aid would be provided in exchange for independent producers continuing to process beef at a designated volume, calculated as a percentage of 2025 output.
While the Trump administration is looking for ways to shore up the production abilities of small manufacturers, the larger companies within the industry are coming under scrutiny. The largest meat producers in the U.S. are Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill and National Beef (a subsidiary of Brazilian MBFR Global Foods). These four companies account for 85% of U.S. beef production.
As the Department of Agriculture seeks to bolster smaller players in the industry, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly investigating the larger companies’ practices to determine whether anticompetitive conduct has been used to keep prices high. Tyson Foods and JBS purport to be incurring losses due to high cattle prices. Both companies have recently closed processing plants due to surging costs.