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By Brian Hews
Publisher | Follow X
August 27, 2-26
Nothing says “fiercely loyal” like getting hit by the same truck twice and still waving as it backs up for a third pass.
Somewhere in farm country and cattle country right now, Trump suckers (voters) are standing in the checkout line staring at $6.69-a-pound ground beef, the same folks who watched soybean prices collapse in 2018, got a bailout check instead of an apology, watched it happen again in 2025 with Argentina scooping up China’s business right after a taxpayer-funded rescue of Argentina’s economy — and are now watching the administration flood the beef market with more Argentine imports to fix a price problem largely caused by drought and herd size, not foreign competition.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is furious. House Republicans are furious. Chuck Grassley is on X furious. Everybody’s furious — except, apparently, at the ballot box, where the fury tends to evaporate right around November.
It’s the political equivalent of a guy who keeps proposing to the person who left him at the altar twice, convinced that this time she’s really going to show up. And when she doesn’t, he blames the caterer.
The catch: economists say the Argentina beef quota is a “rounding error” that won’t even lower grocery prices. So ranchers get to eat the market volatility for a policy that might not deliver the one thing it’s supposedly for. Heads the White House wins a headline about “affordability,” tails the rancher loses a season’s profits. Everybody comes out ahead except the guy who actually raises the cattle.
And that’s where this stops being a story about beef. It’s a story about loyalty.
Trump’s political genius has always been his understanding that his relationship with his base isn’t transactional in the normal political sense. Other politicians lose voters when they don’t deliver. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he can disappoint his voters and convince many of them that somebody else did it.
China retaliates against American soybeans? Blame China.
Farmers lose their export markets? Send them checks.
Argentina steps in and sells soybeans to China? Blame the trade war, the Chinese, the global market — anybody except the guy who started the trade war.
Then help Argentina stabilize its economy. Then buy more of its beef.
At some point, “America First” starts to require a footnote.
American cattle producers aren’t asking Washington to guarantee them riches. They’re asking Washington not to kneecap them while they’re rebuilding a herd that drought, elevated expenses and years of contraction have driven to historic lows.
That’s the remarkable part of this. These aren’t Berkeley progressives suddenly discovering they dislike Donald Trump. This is cattle country. Farm country. Red counties stacked on red counties. People who put Trump signs on barns, Trump flags on pickups, and gave Republicans some of their most reliable margins in America.
They didn’t merely vote for him. They defended him.
Through two impeachments. Through indictments. Through criminal trials. Through January 6. Through tariffs. Through scandals that would have ended the careers of politicians from almost any other era.
The bargain was simple: Trump fights for us. That’s what made the loyalty so durable.
Which makes the beef fight politically fascinating, because this time there isn’t an MSNBC host or Democratic governor standing between the policy and the person getting hurt.
The rancher can see the imported beef. He can see the cattle price. He can see his costs. And he can see whose signature is on the policy.
The White House will argue that consumers need relief, and consumers certainly do. Beef prices are painful. But flooding a tight domestic market with temporarily discounted foreign product while asking American ranchers to expand their herds is a strange way to encourage the long-term production needed to bring prices down.
Raise more cattle, America. Also, we’re bringing in cheaper foreign beef. Good luck with the financing.
And if the imported beef barely moves the supermarket price, the insult becomes almost perfect: ranchers absorb the uncertainty while shoppers wonder where the promised savings went.
That’s not economic policy. That’s political theater with a livestock trailer parked backstage.
Maybe this time cattle country finally decides loyalty is a two-way street. Maybe ranchers decide “America First” ought to include the Americans actually raising America’s beef. Maybe soybean farmers remember what happened the last time.
The political pain may last longer than the news cycle. Or maybe November arrives, the signs go back up, the flags come out, and everybody climbs aboard the same truck again.
The caterer will probably get blamed.
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