President Donald Trump is quadrupling the import of Argentine beef, reports Reuters. This is in an effort to lower the cost of beef in grocery stores and support American cattle ranchers, but many ranchers around the nation disagree with this move as they believe this threatens their livelihood.
Houston Public Media and other outlets say Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is pushing back against President Donald Trump's call to import beef from Argentina, saying that it would hurt Texas ranchers already facing historically low cattle numbers. However, Miller agrees with Trump that beef prices are too high for consumers.
He made these comments on Fox News' Will Cain program:
"The Argentine beef, there's two problems with it. Number one, it's very low quality. So, we have to use it for hamburger meat only. So, it will bring down the price of hamburger meat, but it's not going to bring down the price of those rib eyes, sirloins, or other high-quality cuts. Number two, under the Biden administration, the first time in my lifetime we have an agriculture trade deficit,” explains Miller.
According to him, the U.S. is buying $48 billion more food than it exports.
“We've always been a Breadbasket of the world, we fed ourselves and everybody else, but that reversed under Biden. So, continuing to buy food from outsourcing our beef from another country makes that problem worse," informs Miller.
Miller said he sent a plan to the White House last week which proposes ways to strengthen domestic beef production without relying on imported meat.
"We could do a tax incentive. These cow calf producers are making pretty decent money right now. They could use a tax break. So, we could use tax credit much like the child tax credit. You get a $1000 off if you have a child 17 or under, right off your income tax. So, we could give them a heifer retention tax credit. That would be great. They would jump on that like a duck on a June Bug," says Miller.
Other ideas of Miller's include reopening and expanding grazing access on federal and private lands and allowing targeted imports of live Mexican cattle to stabilize supply.
