As a way to lower retail beef prices, President Donald Trump has said the United States could purchase beef from Argentina. That’s after the U.S. gave Argentina a $20-billion financial bailout, a deal Argentina’s central bank said was signed on Monday (Oct. 20, 2025).
R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard says importing beef won’t reduce retail beef prices.
Bullard says implementation of mandatory country of origin labeling– or MCOOL– on all beef would be a more effective solution.
Bullard says another possible solution would get the Big 4 meat packers involved.
Bullard says we need to find a balance between cattle prices and the retail meat case.
Additionally, Bullard says the timing is terrible.
Bullard and his organization encourage President Trump to “manage imports, restore mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef, and put an end to the monopolistic control that packers and retailers have over our beef supply chain. Doing so will incentivize America’s ranchers to rebuild and expand the U.S. herd to meet our national security needs and ensure that consumer beef prices are determined by competitive market forces.”
Additionally, there’s a wave of beef price-fixing cases working their way through the U.S. court system and Bullard hopes President Trump will “direct his antitrust enforcers to determine the extent to which the alleged unlawful price fixing has contributed to today’s higher beef prices.”
Hear more from Bullard in this week’s Agriculture In-depth podcast titled R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard talks buying beef from Argentina and how MCOOL could help. Find it wherever you get your podcasts or can play it through a website link at www.DRGnews.com or on the DRG News app.
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The R-CALF USA news release on this topic is below.
On Sunday (Oct. 19, 2025) aboard Air Force One, the Associated Press reported that President Trump announced his plan to bring U.S. beef prices down by importing beef from Argentina.
Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, the nation’s largest cattle association that exclusively represents cattle farmers and ranchers, issued the following statement in response to the president’s purported plan.
“We acknowledge that beef prices are higher than what a competitive market would predict. Decades of failure to manage excessive imports and address unprecedented industry concentration have caused beef prices to disproportionately increase more than cattle prices.
“As beef prices increased, our cattle herd shrank because increasing volumes of imports displaced the need for domestic cattle. Then along came a drought that accelerated the ongoing decline of our domestic herd, converting our industry’s chronic problem into today’s acute problem.
“Global packers are importing beef from about 20 different countries, including Argentina, and because we do not have a mandatory country-of-origin labeling law for beef, the global packers do not need to reduce the price of imported product compared to domestic product. This negates any theoretical benefit of using more imports to drive down domestic beef prices.
“The president should immediately require mandatory country-of-origin labels on beef so American consumers can choose to help rebuild and expand our nation’s contracted cattle herd.
“Market participants know that increased imports from Argentina will reduce demand for domestic cattle, and that’s why cattle markets have responded negatively to the president’s plan. And there couldn’t be a worse time for this to happen, as many producers are getting ready to sell this year’s production, meaning they will receive less for their cattle, and that will threaten their ability to remain economically viable, particularly as they face increased input costs in their operations.
“For decades the government has been inviting more imports from countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Namibia, claiming these increased imports would provide consumers more choices and lower consumer beef prices. This did not work and cannot work in a market where these imports are not differentiated with a country-of-origin label and where competitive market forces have been replaced with corporate control by concentrated global beef packers and concentrated beef retailers.
“There is a wave of beef price-fixing cases working their way through the court system. President Trump should direct his antitrust enforcers to determine the extent to which the alleged unlawful price fixing has contributed to today’s higher beef prices.
“We urge the president to manage imports, restore mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef, and put an end to the monopolistic control that packers and retailers have over our beef supply chain. Doing so will incentivize America’s ranchers to rebuild and expand the U.S. herd to meet our national security needs and ensure that consumer beef prices are determined by competitive market forces.”
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