A Tariff Exemption Equal to 2% of US Beef Consumption Was Enough to Rattle Ranchers, Not Enough to Help Consumers
The 300,000 metric tons that could be exempted from tariffs amounted to around 2% of total US beef consumption. NPR reports that the result was a lose-lose: enough to rattle beef producers, but not enough to help consumers.
Ranchers were already squeezed: margins are always tight, says Zach Raff, an incoming livestock economist at Iowa State University. Drought in much of the western U.S. made hay much more expensive and shrank the nation's beef herd.
Raff said the far bigger challenge from the tariff exemption was the amount of uncertainty it introduced.
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The policy's real cost is the signal it sends. A producer could expect even more imports next year while cattle prices are at record highs and projected to stay high—and Raff called uncertainty the bigger challenge.
Maybe, but 2% of consumption is tiny. The fact that it still rattled ranchers says more about how tight margins are than about the import volume.