Donald Trump loves tariffs.
“I always say tariffs is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary,” he told crowds after his inauguration.
“Those tariffs are going to make us rich as hell.”
When announcing reciprocal tariffs this week, he was asked by a journalist if prices would go up for American consumers.
“Not necessarily, but I’ll tell you what will go up is jobs,” the president replied.
“This [tariffs] is something that should have been done many years ago.
“I think the farmers are going to be helped by this very much, because product is being dumped into our country and our farmers are getting hurt very badly.”
But Donald Trump also loves hamburgers and would understand the political importance of keeping burger prices affordable.
Perhaps that’s why Australia’s cattle industry is quietly confident of having another strong year of beef exports to the US.
US cattle prices are breaking records with the national herd slumping to its lowest level since 1951. (supplied)
A record 2024
Last year Australia exported a record 1.34 million tonnes of beef around the world.
The biggest customer was the US which took 394,716 tonnes, up 60 per cent on the previous year, and valued at $4.37 billion according to Meat and Livestock Australia.
This year is again off to a strong start, with 25,809 tonnes exported to the US last month, up 22 per cent from January 2024.
The size of the US cattle herd has fallen to its lowest level since 1951 because of drought, and the price of ground beef in the US — a key ingredient for those famous hamburgers — is on the rise.
Ground beef prices in the US are surging. (ABC Landline)
Reasons to be confident
The chief executive of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association, Will Evans, spoke to ABC Landline from Washington DC this week.
He has been touring the US and said he was optimistic about the year ahead for trade.
“I think the good news for Australian grass-fed beef producers is that Americans receive an enormous benefit from the product we supply into the US market,”
he said.
“We’re sending a lean product that they call trimmings, which they use to make hamburgers.
“Our product gets blended with their product and it enables a better product to be served to the consumer.
“I think if we can continue positive dialogue and relationships with our American counterparts and reinforce the message that ‘our product doesn’t compete with yours, it enables yours’, then we can benefit.”
Mr Evans said cattle and beef prices in the US seemed to be at record highs across the board after years of drought.
He said weather conditions in Australia would now play a big factor in whether exports to the US would reach similar heights to last year.
Pressure on Trump
Even though cattle prices are soaring for US producers, there are some industry groups pressuring the president to force his love of tariffs onto Australian beef imports.
On social media, lobby group R-Calf USA wrote: “In 2024 we imported nearly 1 billion pounds of beef from Australia, but we exported only about 1 million pounds to them”.
“We need tariffs and tariff rate quotas on these countries to ensure they cannot continually displace our American farmers and ranchers,” it said.
But is Australian beef “displacing” American product?
As Daryl Peel, from Oklahoma State University, explained to The Farm Ranch Guide, “some products we just don’t make enough of, so we import and one item that is imported to the US is lean beef”.
“We don’t produce enough lean beef to keep up with the fat trimmings from our fed cattle so it can be turned into ground beef,” Dr Peel said.
“Over 50 per cent of beef consumption in the US is in ground beef, so we have a deficit of lean product.”
So the numbers suggest it would make sense for the US to keep up its volumes of lean beef imports, especially in the short term.
Australia is ready to supply.
But Trump loves tariffs.
Watch ABC TV’s Landline at 12:30pm on Sunday or on ABC iview.
