Trump’s move to pause beef tariffs risks blowback

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Today's Top Stories - August 21, 2026

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It’s Friday. Against all odds and several hundred emails, we’ve made it.

Beef tariffs get a timeout

Bessent weighs America’s debt

Trump goes all in for Graham

IndyCar zooms into DC

Programming note: Hello! We are Colin Meyn and Steff Danielle Thomas filling in for Cate. Please send your tips, comments and story ideas to cmeyn@thehill.com or sthomas@thehill.com.

This moo-ve is not going to thrill cattle farmers:

President Trump is intervening in the beef markets in a move certain to irk some key constituencies.

What’s the deal? In a Truth Social post, Trump said, “for the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out of quota tariff. We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.”

The president did not say where the beef is coming from, but he has previously considered similar arrangements with Argentina.

Beef prices have risen faster than other foods during Trump’s second term. Both ground beef and beef steak pieces rose by 9 percent or more year-on-year, according to the July CPI report.

Queue the blowback: Trump’s previous meddling in the beef market has drawn criticism from cattle ranchers and Republican senators in major beef-producing states. 

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), a staunch Trump ally, said Friday in a post on social platform X that he’d been warning against such action “because American ranchers have been struggling against the packer monopoly for decades, and this will further harm them — most of whom are MAGA Republicans.”

Other criticism came from some predictable figures. 

“What a slap in the face to American cattlemen & consumers,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote online. “Worse than socialism! Dumping foreign beef in U.S. markets can temporarily lower prices but it won’t incentivize American farmers to raise more beef.”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) chimed in too, saying U.S. farmers will now “be undercut by foreign imported beef, as they have been hit financially with high cost of fertilizer and diesel from Trump’s war with Iran.”

Bessent is busy putting out another fire:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is scrambling to convince the markets to stop selling off U.S. bonds.

He moved on Wednesday to double the Treasury’s buyback limit, and on Thursday went on CNBC........

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