On Sunday 19 October 2025, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One during a flight from Florida to Washington, Donald Trump said the United States could buy Argentine beef in order to reduce prices for American consumers: "We would buy some beef from Argentina. If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down." Trump had committed days earlier to addressing beef prices as part of his efforts to hold down inflation.
The statement was followed by policy. On 6 February 2026 Trump signed an executive order expanding the low-tariff quota for Argentine beef by an additional 20,000 metric tons per quarter, taking the annual figure to 80,000 metric tons — four times the previous 20,000-tonne quota.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association called the expansion a "misguided effort" that would damage the livelihoods of American cattle producers while doing little to affect the price consumers pay. Its chief executive, Colin Woodall, said: "It is imperative that President Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins let the cattle markets work." The producers affected are concentrated in the Plains and Mountain West — Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Texas — rather than the industrial Midwest.
This entry records the statement and the policy that followed it. Whether US beef prices fell as a result is a separate and testable question.
