What we want the president to do

Let’s say you could have President Donald Trump’s attention for 20 minutes. What would you ask him to do for our domestic cattle and sheep industries? And what information would you provide so he fully understands the crisis our two industries are facing?

Here’s what we’d do: First, we’d tell him that neither our domestic cattle nor sheep industry can be expected to meet our national security interest of being near self-reliant in the production of beef and lamb if we maintain the status quo — that is, if we continue along the same path our industries have been on for the past four decades.

So, he’d need to know that the rationalizations repeated over and over by supporters of the status quo — namely, that we need to import cattle and beef in order to prevent seasonal shortages and to allow our domestic packing plants and feedlots to operate at optimal capacities; we need lean imports to mix with our fattier trim; and that packers and feedlots need unpriced forward contracts to ensure a reliable and orderly supply of slaughter-ready cattle — are all false.

None of these are necessary, but they help ensure that global meat packers will continue controlling the domestic beef and lamb supply chains by causing the United States to become increasingly dependent on cheaper, imported beef and lamb; by preventing the United States from achieving self-sufficiency in beef and lamb production; and by affording global beef packers the means to manage demand signals for domestic livestock by reducing competition and, hence, prices for domestic cattle and sheep through the use of unpriced forward contracts.

For background, we’d explain that over the past four decades, since 1980, the U.S. cattle industry has lost over half its beef cattle farmers and ranchers and 25% of its beef cow herd.

And the sheep industry has lost almost two-thirds, or 63%, of its full-time — those with over 100 head — sheep farmers and ranchers and more than 60% of its sheep and lamb inventory.

We’d also explain that when the United States entered each of the three major free trade agreements that were represented as major reforms to bring prosperity to U.S. cattle and sheep producers — including the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, the U.S.-Australia FTA in 2005 and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2020 — that they instead exacerbated the decline of both U.S. cattle and sheep producers and their respective livestock herds.

Next, we’d explain that the reason we’re losing so many cattle and sheep farmers and ranchers is because the status quo has caused domestic producers to suffer prolonged periods of unprofitability, which cannot be explained away by the intermittent droughts that occurred during the past four decades.

We’d provide documentation showing how imported lamb is pricing our domestic sheep producers right out of the market, with imported racks of lamb undercutting domestic prices by over $12 per pound.

Then we’d explain how the long-term lack of profitability and shrinking of our domestic industries threaten national security.

The sheep industry provides glaring evidence, as over 73% of the sheep meat consumed in America is now imported and our domestic production has declined nearly 60%.

And while the sheep industry is farther down the road to ruin than the cattle industry, the volume of imported beef and cattle has been steadily rising, with beef imports more than doubling over the past four decades and now accounting for 22% of domestic beef consumption.

In other words, beef imports are capturing more and more market share away from our domestic cattle producers, increasing America’s dependency on imports for its beef.

Finally, we’d show that the U.S. cattle industry has suffered under an untenable trade deficit for decades, averaging well over a billion pounds per year since 2015 and that the U.S. imports about three times the volume of beef and cattle from Canada and Mexico than we export to them.

To restore competition in our cattle markets, we’d ask President Trump to:

• Urge passage of mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef so domestic producers can promote and distinguish their superior product and consumers can choose to purchase it.

• Prohibit meatpackers from using forward contracts that do not contain a negotiated base price, as this will eliminate the packers’ ability to manipulate cattle prices by strategically entering and exiting the cash market. Indeed, recent economic studies show that with today’s cattle prices, a 10% increase in the volume of these unpriced forward contracts decreases cattle prices from about $1.30 to $1.50 per hundredweight.

We’d then ask the president to establish import quotas and substantial tariffs on beef, cattle, sheep and lamb to incentive the rebuilding and expansion of our domestic industries.

And we’d ask that he repeal the mandatory electronic identification requirement imposed on domestic cattle producers and that the status-quo-supporting beef checkoff program be substantially reformed or eliminated.

This is what we’d ask the president to do. If you agree, you should do the same.