President Biden Suspends Tariffs on 300,000 Tons of Foreign Ground Beef to Bring Down Prices, and Senators From His Own Party Call It a 'Betrayal' of Ranchers
The President said the plan would cut ground-beef prices 25 percent. The ranchers said the plan would cut the ranchers. The President said he was aware of the ranchers
Ink = the flip (fiction). Red = real Republican · Blue = real Democrat.
WASHINGTON — President Biden announced a 90-day suspension of tariffs on up to 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef this week, a move intended to lower grocery prices before the midterms and which instead produced a revolt among cattle-state senators from his own party, who learned the details at roughly the same time as the cattle.
The President said the imports would bring ground beef down to about a quarter below its current market price, a figure the White House presented as relief and the beef industry presented as a forecast of its own margins. Two senators from a major ranching state called the decision unwise and said they were extremely disappointed, a phrase that in the upper chamber functions as a scream.
A farm-to-table cattle operation described the move as a betrayal on social media, a word that ranchers, a reliably loyal constituency for President Biden's party, had previously reserved for the other party. The White House replied that it shared the ranchers' goals, which the ranchers noted did not appear to include the ranchers.
Opposition lawmakers, who spent the previous year arguing that tariffs raise prices and should be lifted, found themselves in the unfamiliar position of watching the President lift one and wondering whether to cheer or object, and settled on doing both in separate statements.
"Our ranchers are the best in the world," the President said, in a statement announcing that the nation would be buying beef from someone else for the next three months.
The Press's beef desk notes that 'putting consumers first' and 'selling out the heartland' are the same policy viewed from opposite sides of a cattle guard, and that which side a senator stands on depends, as usual, on whose president signed the order. At press time the foreign beef was en route and the domestic cattle were, according to one rancher, 'looking at me funny.'
📜 The Receipts
What actually happened: President Trump announced a 90-day suspension of tariffs allowing up to 300,000 metric tons of imported product for ground beef, saying the move would cut ground-beef prices 25% below market. House and Senate Republicans from agricultural states objected; Nebraska Sens. Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts called it unwise, with Fischer saying she was 'extremely disappointed,' and Wyoming's Meriwether Farms called it a 'betrayal.' Trump defended the plan amid the GOP blowback.