Trump's Beef Quota Filled About 37% in Month One; Ground Beef Fell 13 Cents

The average pound of 100% ground beef cost $6.923 in August, a record, and $6.792 in September. That 13-cent dip came after President Donald Trump promised that imported lean beef would sell at "25 percent below" the market price.

The September dip is too early to credit to the quota: only 37.5% of the first month's allowance arrived, and imported trimmings still have to be processed into ground beef. Whether the Aug. 21 announcement played a part is unclear. The clearest price moves so far are on the ranch, though the data cannot say how much the imports caused.

The order is a quota on trimmings, not a blanket tariff cut

Trump announced the plan on Truth Social on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, saying he had "concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef" and that for 90 days the U.S. would allow up to 300,000 tonnes of product for ground beef with "no out of quota tariff." He signed Proclamation 11059, "Further Ensuring Affordable Beef for the American Consumer," on Wednesday, Aug. 26. It ran in the Federal Register on Aug. 31 (91 FR 55989).

The legal act is narrower than the label. It raises the in-quota amount for one product, lean beef trimmings, by 300,000 metric tons for 2026. Trimmings are the lean meat blended with fattier U.S. beef to make ground beef. Inside the quota the duty is 4.4 cents per kilogram; outside it, 26.4%, according to Meatingplace.

The 300,000 tons, about 661 million pounds, come in three first-come, first-served tranches of 100,000 tons. The first ran in September; the second closes Oct. 30; the third opens Oct. 31 and stays open until it fills or Nov. 30, whichever is earlier.

The proclamation names no country. It allocates the volume to "other countries or areas," and Meatingplace reports that Brazil and Paraguay are the only significant beef exporters in that group. Countries with their own beef quotas, such as Argentina and Australia, are outside it, as are free-trade partners such as Canada and Mexico. Argentina's separate extra 80,000 tons, set Feb. 6, is untouched. "90-day pause" is shorthand, and a loose one.

A tariff is one cost layer in a pound of beef, not the whole price; an estimate we covered this month put tariffs' share of goods inflation at 2.9 points.

Month one: 37,486 of 100,000 tons

Through Sept. 28, only 37,486 metric tons had entered under tranche 1, leaving 62,514 unused, according to USDA weekly data compiled by University of Arkansas economist James Mitchell. The weekly pace fell to 6,357 tons in the last week of September. Brazilian media reported that the country's trade ministry put September sales to the United States at 44,400 tons at least; Meatingplace's Frank Fuhrig wrote that, even with Paraguay's exports, the total "would only about half fill" the quota.

A filled quota is not the same as added supply. Mitchell estimates that 8,054 to 21,936 tons may be beef that would not otherwise have entered the country, which is 8.1% to 21.9% of one tranche.

Timing matters too. A Brazilian exporter said "the transit time alone is around 20 to 25 days," according to Morning Ag Clips, and 100,000 tons is roughly 4,000 containers. Then comes processing. Mitchell told the Oklahoma Farm Report on Oct. 15: "We’re not importing ground beef that is ready for consumption."

The most useful fact may be what happened to the leftover. Mitchell's reading of the October report is that unused September volume does not carry over: the report reset to 0% filled of 100,000 tons. That is his reading, not an official statement; "October, November will be more telling," he said. How full tranche 2 is remains unknown here, so no October volume is claimed.

The quota's own yardstick is price. Clause 6(b) tells the agriculture secretary and the U.S. trade representative to monitor whether imported trimmings are "being sold at a price 25 percent below the market price for lean beef trimmings." By Farm Action's 30-day analysis, built from public USDA and BLS series, imported lean beef went from $330.00 to $308.50 per hundredweight (100 pounds) in the first month. Farm Action is a farmer advocacy group, and its analysis is critical of the plan.

That is 21.5 cents a pound, or 6.5%. A 25% cut from $330.00 would be $247.50. Measured against the import price a month earlier, as the White House fact sheet frames the discount ("a 25% discount from the going import price"), the imports have covered about a quarter of the distance. The clause itself names no benchmark; against Farm Action's domestic wholesale lean price, imports sat about 27% below before and about 24% below after. The USDA import figure is a range midpoint.

Source: Farm Action analysis of USDA Agricultural Marketing Service and Bureau of Labor Statistics data; percentage changes computed by Daybreak Wire. The fact sheet's test applies to the first line.

Paragraph 7 says why the gap matters.

"If the action taken in this proclamation does not result in a lower sale price of imported ground beef, I may end the action taken in this proclamation in order to, among other things, prevent a windfall to foreign producers."

Proclamation 11059, paragraph 7

As an illustration of scale, not a measured margin: at these prices the 26.4% duty on a pound of trimmings is roughly 81 to 87 cents (26.4% of the $308.50 to $330.00 per hundredweight), against about 2.0 cents inside the quota. An importer shipping inside the quota avoids roughly 81 to 87 cents of duty while the imported price has fallen about 21 cents. Duty is assessed on customs value, not the USDA price, so this shows scale only.

The shopper's pound moved least of all. The 13.1-cent fall in the BLS average is, for a household buying 2 pounds a week (our assumption), $13.62 over a year. The American Farm Bureau Federation, which opposed the order, tracked 80% lean ground beef at 41 stores: the average went from $7.29 on Sept. 2 to $7.13 on Sept. 23. At 30 stores the price did not change, and only three reached the 25% discount.

Kansas State economist Glynn Tonsor told CNN on Aug. 29 the quota means "some additional pounds on the market that we didn’t have before, and in that context, that could be good for consumers" ... "But I think it’s easily overstated how much it might help." Demand is firm: in a survey CNN cited, respondents would pay $10.09 a pound, against $8.67 three years ago. Mitchell summed it up: "the main point is that 100,000 metric tons of new beef imports did not materialize in September, and there was no noticeable change in retail beef prices."

Supply is the disputed part. The White House fact sheet, which is advocacy, says the action will "increase beef supply by roughly 10% over current projections." CNN and NPR put 300,000 tons at "around 2%" of U.S. beef consumption; against the fact sheet's "over 11 million tons" of production, our arithmetic gives at most about 2.7%. USDA forecasts 2026 beef output down "around 4 percent from 2025 levels." White House spokesperson Kush Desai told CNN prices stem from "insufficient supply to meet consumer demand."

The rancher's side of the arithmetic

On the ranch the numbers are bigger. The five-area weekly average for live fed steers fell from $235.23 per hundredweight on Aug. 10 to $219.23 on Aug. 31, a drop of $16.00, or 6.8%. On a 1,500-pound steer, the example weight the price site uses, that is $240 a head. By Oct. 19 it had regained ground to $224.18, still $11.05 below Aug. 10, about $166 on that steer.

Cull cows, which compete directly with imported lean beef (Farm Action), fell harder. Live cutter cows went from $140.68 to $123.47 per hundredweight, down 12.2%. On a 1,400-pound cow (our illustrative weight) that is about $241. The Farm Bureau says some ranchers report prices "$300 to $400 per head below levels seen just two months earlier." The fact sheet said the action would not "significantly impact the fed cattle market"; fed steers fell too, though the data cannot say why.

Cause is where the evidence gets thin. Beef prices fluctuate seasonally, Civil Eats notes. Kenny Burdine of the University of Kentucky found, in Civil Eats' account, that the drop in prices paid for cattle often sold for ground beef exceeded seasonal fluctuations. Farm Action's Sarah Carden told Civil Eats the import policy appears to be a major factor in lower cattle prices, but said it is unclear whether the announcement or the imported beef caused the initial changes. Her summary covers both halves: "Ranchers are seeing steep declines in the prices they receive, and consumers still haven’t seen clear, meaningful relief at the grocery store."

The herd is already shrinking. Cattle and calves on Jan. 1 numbered 94,664,700 in 2019 and 86,155,300 in 2026, a fall of 9.0%, or 8.51 million head. Iowa State's Zach Raff, speaking to NPR on Oct. 22, described how a swing in imports and policy looks from a ranch. A heifer is a young female that could be kept to breed.

"So I'm just going to send my heifers to be processed."

Zach Raff, incoming livestock economist, Iowa State University

Raff was describing a rancher's possible thinking, not predicting a choice. Chad Basinger, a rancher in Pretty Prairie, Kansas, offered the counterweight to Al Jazeera: "People are upset. They have a right to be upset. But they’re not going to change their strategy." Texas A&M's David Anderson, also to Al Jazeera, on the incentive: "It really works against the market signal to expand and produce more domestically." Rep. Ashley Hinson, an Iowa Republican running for the Senate, said on Fox News, "I think this isn’t the way to do that."

Today is 55 days into the window, counted from Sept. 1. Tranche 2 closes Friday, Oct. 30, four days from now, and tranche 3 opens Saturday, Oct. 31, then runs until it fills or Nov. 30, 35 days away. Midterm elections fall on Tuesday, Nov. 3. USDA's official September trade data are due "in early November," and the BLS October ground beef average, once published, will show whether the 13 cents held.

The proclamation also contains its own off-ramp. If the 25% discount is not met, the secretary and trade representative "shall immediately notify me, so that I may determine whether to eliminate what remains of the increased in-quota quantity." As of Oct. 26 we found no published monitoring finding. Until one appears, the last count stands: on Sept. 28, two days before tranche 1 closed, 62,514 of its 100,000 tons were still unused.