Where’s the Beef, Don?

Friday is apparently a day when Donald Trump believes that tariffs increase prices. We know this because Trump said that he will lower beef prices until shortly after the election by allowing 300,000 metric tons (roughly 660 million pounds) of beef to be imported tariff-free from other countries over the next 90 days.

After insisting, in complete defiance of all the evidence, that tariffs are paid by the exporting country, Trump is apparently now acknowledging that the tariffs get passed on to U.S. consumers. When it comes to trying to keep Republicans in control of the House and Senate, Trump is willing to wade into reality.

However, he is not doing a full-fledged plunge into the real world; he’s just getting his toe wet. In addition to weakening his quotas on beef, he also pronounced in his Truth Social tweet:

“We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.”

This raises the question of a commitment from who? And how will this price reduction be enforced? At the risk of being rude, I will bring some context into the picture.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, we consume a bit over 28 billion pounds of beef a year. That would come to about 7 billion pounds over a 90-day period. That means Trump is proposing to increase the beef supply by a bit less than 10%.

Most estimates find that the demand for beef is relatively inelastic. This means that a 10% increase in supply (which assumes no corresponding reduction in domestic supply) would lead to a drop in beef prices that is considerably smaller, say a 5% drop. This means that Trump’s decision to relax beef quotas won’t come close to reducing the market price by 25%.

It may be the case that Trump has a plan to ration low-priced beef, sort of like what was done under Soviet communism, where selected people (MAGA party members?) get coupons for their pound of low-cost beef. Or alternatively, Trump may have no idea of what he’s talking about and the 25% price reduction is imaginary, just like the $20 trillion in foreign investment coming into the country and his Great Healthcare Plan.

I guess we’ll just have to wait. But in the meantime, a whole new generation will be asking, “Where’s the beef?”

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.