特朗普放宽部分牛肉进口关税，活牛期货大跌

I, Lena, you've been following what's been going on and b prices. We've all moaned about the high cost. Um, what is significant about what we got from the president, or is there still stuff to be known? The biggest unknown, I think, is where the supplies are coming from. People are watching that really closely. I think the biggest bets are probably Australia, Brazil, Argentina. I think this move has been really interesting for the market, because it's the latest in a series that Trump has tried to do, so he already tried to boost imports from Argentina, which for the first half of the year are about double what they were last year already.

Um, and soon the U.S. is expected to resume live cattle shipments from Mexico also to ease supplies. And so I think a move of the scope from the president really goes to show just how stubborn that pricing has been, that further action is needed. Okay. But, you know, when you think about it, if there's a cattle shortage, how much can tariff policy really help that? And realistically, what else can policymakers do to combat that?

Yeah, it's a really hard situation for the industry. So what we see right now are really short term Band-Aid fixes in terms of imports. They're very much helping to fill the shortfall in demand. But the U.S. that produces most of its beef already on its own. So imports, even as they're rising to a record share record share still up 20%. And now we're in this really weird situation where U.S. ranchers are trying to rebuild the herd.

But that takes a long time. So basically, the calculus they're trying to do is, do I sell my animal for me right now, get really high prices back? Or do I wait to keep that animal for breeding later on? And it's been really hard to do that. Yeah. When you see this type of move the live cattle futures market plummeted today. So that's another move that's creating uncertainty for ranchers even more. Well we happen to have a rancher with us.

We are delighted to have back with us. He joined us earlier in the week. Vance Howard, he's CEO and portfolio manager of Howard Capital Management. We know that. But in addition to managing money, he owns and operates the Barresi Ranch in Madisonville, Texas. They do specialize in registered longhorn cattle. We want to bring you into the conversation that we're having here. Vance, what do we need to understand about, um, this business and what we're seeing in terms of policy out of the white House?

Well, you know, they've kind of got themselves in a little bit of a pinch because, you know, we do have a shortage of cattle right now. You know, if you look at, uh, Tyson, they shut down two meatpacking plants about two weeks ago, one in Illinois and one in Utah for lack of supply, meaning they don't have the cattle to deal with. And you've got two different kinds of county government. All right. A little bit of a freeze there.

We'll see if we can get back to Vance. You know, Eileen, I want to go back to you. You follow the sector we talked about on the weekend with you, about what Tyson has been doing, because they just don't have the cattle, so they don't need the plants up and running. Yeah, exactly. The meatpackers have been in a situation for basically since the start of 2024, where they've been paying so much for cattle that they're losing money on every head that they process.

And so they've gradually Tyson, JBS, Cargill, they've all sort of pulled back capacity a little bit to try to ease that competition for supplies. To be sure, the companies are still profitable, but that's largely in their other segments, like chicken. The beef business itself is losing money, and Tyson, having already closed plans this time around, reported earnings again that again missed the mark, cut their outlook and their right sizing more.

Vance, I think we've reconnected with you. Maybe there was a cattle listening and a cow or something and I got a little bit. Maybe they put a tariff on me. Exactly. Maybe so. So continue with your thought in terms of understanding the broader, um, cattle market, because it isn't just been tariffs. There's been other things that have been impacting the supply where it has been. And you know, when you look at the cost of but cattle right now what there's a lot of ranchers that want to sell at this high.

So you know building back up the supply over 90 days may be more of a challenge than what people, people realize. And what you're seeing with, with ground beef is different than what you're seeing with Prime. Prime. Is it the fourth, fourth highest price it's ever been in history, which is, you know, way up there? Now ground beef has dropped down quite a bit. But then again, you got to look at the different kind of cattle.

You got live cattle and you've got fully grown cattle. Live cattle is about a 4 to £800 calf or a steer. So that's a little bit cheaper. Uh, it's not a fully, you know, cow that's going to deliver the most amount of the beef. But I think there's a lot of challenges here. And with the tariffs coming off, I think it benefits Canada. But I also think it can benefit us too. As far as dropping down some of these cost of, uh, you know, I own two restaurants too, in our cost of, uh, uh, our cost of prime, uh, steaks are through the roof.

Okay. But over the long term, do those kind of downward price pressures continue from these tariff, this tariff relief, or do you. We need to see more. Right. You're gonna I think you're gonna have to see more. I don't think 90 days you can put it in anything. And I mean, you know, a cat has got a British got to deliver a calf. It's got to grow up to the point that it can be eaten. I mean, you can see my rug back there.

We ate that guy and him, but, uh, so that's a that's a cow hat back there. But it's going to take time to redo this. And again, with high prices of cattle, especially Prime, you know, you're seen a lot of ranchers that are selling off. But hey, here's one thing. And Carol and I talked about this last week when I was in New York. You know, we've got Elon Musk coming in with it with a semiconductor plant, which is buying up thousands of acres around Grimes County in between.

College Station in Huntsville were in a rural part of Texas where a lot of ranchers was. He buys these ranch lands. That's driving up the cost of land, which is, you know, a lot of ranchers are selling into that that profit margin. So that's also going to increase the the profit, the profitability factor. Is a cow profitable if you're land really expensive anymore? So there's a lot of different dynamics going on here.

So great for you guys who own the land perhaps, but not necessarily great for for we consumers. That's exactly right. You know, I've got a good friend of mine, a good business partner. He's getting bought out by Elon Musk right now. I think he might have signed the contract last week for that, that semiconductor plant going into Grimes County. And they paid him a premium price to where he said, I can't I can't not not take it.

You know, I just gotta say, uh, just one last question, Vance. You know, it makes me think about the food production. Like when we're competing for things like data centers or what have you are semiconductor plants. I mean, you got to have places to produce food. And increasingly, we want to make sure we have production domestically, because if anything, Covid taught us supply chains can be impacted pretty quickly. And not only that, Carol, when you expand on that, it's incredibly dangerous for us not to control our food supply.

That's not a good thing either. And by the way, when you import cattle from different countries, you know, I know the FDA does their job, but, you know, they're eating what they're feeding them down there. And so who knows what that is on our ranch. We, we we raised grass fed cattle with no preservatives, no additives, and we try to stay away from any type of chemicals because we're trying to eat healthy dow