Once upon a time, you paid fifty bucks for a steak only if your waiter wore a tux. Now you pay it under fluorescent lights at the supermarket.
That’s not inflation. That’s a Brazilian beef cartel squeezing American families. Here’s the part no one ever explains:
Beef prices aren’t set on the ranch. They’re set in the slaughterhouse — the place where cattle are turned into the burgers and steaks you buy at the store. Control that step, and you control the price. Period.
And right now, America’s slaughterhouses are controlled by a foreign-dominated cartel tied to Brazil.
The United States has over half a million cattle ranches. But almost all of their cattle must pass through a tiny number of meatpacking plants before reaching your plate. Just four companies control about 85% of U.S. beef processing — and two of them, JBS and National Beef, are effectively controlled from Brazil.
That’s not competition. That’s a choke point.
That’s because Brazil isn’t just another beef producer. It’s the largest beef exporter in the world. And China isn’t just another customer; It’s the world’s biggest beef buyer.
When Brazilian-controlled firms run major U.S. processing plants, American beef prices stop reflecting public conditions. Foreign demand sets the floor — and China ends up setting the price of dinner in America.
That’s how a backyard barbecue turns into a luxury item.
This Brazil–China beef axis squeezes Americans from both ends. Ranchers get paid less. You pay more — while the profits pour offshore.
That’s not a free market. That’s market muscle.
The danger of this Brazil–China chokehold became impossible to ignore last summer, when trade tensions flared and Brazilian exporters shifted beef away from the United States and toward China. Supplies tightened. Prices jumped. Your grocery bill followed weeks later.
No cartel or foreign power should have that kind of leverage over what Americans eat. That’s why President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Justice to launch a full antitrust investigation into foreign-dominated meatpacking firms.
We would never tolerate a foreign-aligned cartel embedded in our power grid, our ports, or our telecom networks. We shouldn’t tolerate one embedded in our food supply.
Trump has always understood that economic security is national security — and food security is part of that fight.
If America raises the cattle, the public should set the price, not a Brazil–China export axis operating through a cartelized-processing bottleneck.
Antitrust law exists for moments like this. When concentration becomes coercion, the answer isn’t hand-wringing. It’s restoring competition. And if that means breakups and divestitures, so be it.
The people didn’t vote to have their dinner prices set overseas.
TRUMP PROVED IT WAS EASY TO CONDEMN ANTISEMITISM
They voted for leaders willing to break cartels — and bring steak back to the dinner table without a tux.
Peter Navarro is White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.