Trump Accuses Meatpackers of Colluding to Boost Beef Prices

Dry weather has forced Marlo Ramirez cuts beef for a customer in a grocery store on July 22, 2025 in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

Key Points

• President Donald Trump urged the Department of Justice to investigate U.S. meat-packing companies for alleged price manipulation.
• Live cattle contract prices fell 5.3% over the past month but are 21% higher than a year ago, while beef prices reached record levels.
• In the quarter ended in June, Tyson Foods’ beef business saw a 10% increase in its average beef price but a 3% decline in sales volume.

President Donald Trump called on the Department of Justice to investigate U.S. meat-packing companies, accusing them of “illicit collusion, price fixing, and price manipulation” to push up beef prices.

“We will always protect our American Ranchers, and they are being blamed for what is being done by Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers, who artificially inflate prices, and jeopardize the security of our Nation’s food supply,” he wrote in a social media post.

Trump said in his post that while cattle prices have dropped substantially, the price of boxed beef has gone up. “You know that something is ‘fishy,’” he wrote, “We will get to the bottom of it very quickly.”

“Despite high consumer prices for beef, beef packers have been losing money because the price of cattle is at record highs,” said Julie Anna Potts, CEO of the Meat Institute, a trade group represents hundreds of meat packers and processors, in a statement. “For more than a year, beef packers have been operating at a loss due to a tight cattle supply and strong demand.”

She noted that the beef industry is “heavily regulated,” and market transactions are “transparent.” Beef processors welcome a “fact-based discussion about beef affordability,” the Meat Institute says.

Dry weather has forced many farmers to scale back the size of their herd. Over the past month, futures prices for live cattle have fallen 5.3%, but are still 21% higher than a year ago.

Beef prices have risen to record levels this year. The cost of uncooked beef steaks reached $12.26 per pound as of September, up from $10.89 a year ago, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Major meatpackers in the U.S., including Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef Packing Company, and the Brazilian giant JBS, control a large share of the beef-processing market. While the suggestion of price fixing isn’t new—the companies have denied wrongdoing in the past—the fresh demand for a federal probe signals both political and regulatory pressure for the group.

Stock in Tyson and JBS both tumbled late afternoon on Friday following Trump’s post, but recovered some ground later. Tyson shares finished the day with a 1.9% gain, while JBS lost 3.6%. Cargill and National Beef Packing aren’t publicly traded.

In the quarter ended in June, Tyson’s beef business reported a 10% increase in average beef price compared to a year ago, but sales volume declined 3%. The beef business recorded an adjusted operational loss of $151 million in the quarter, more than double the loss a year earlier.

Tyson is set to report earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in September, on Monday.

Likewise, JBS’s North America beef business posted more than $300 million in losses in the June quarter, nearly double the loss from a year ago and at a 4.6% loss margin—despite a 6% growth in sales dollar value due to high beef prices.

The U.S. beef business faced pressure from “an unfavorable cattle cycle, as the spread between livestock costs and beef prices narrowed,” the company said in its earnings report.

JBS is set to report its third-quarter earnings on Nov. 13.

Besides the big players, there are also over 1,700 smaller, often family-owned meat processors serving local communities across the country, many of which are represented by the America Association of Meat Processors.

“While it is impossible to determine the scope of a DOJ investigation on the basis of a single social media post, these small processors are certainly not price fixing or manipulating prices,” said Chris Young, executive director of AAMP.

He said that there are many factors that shape why prices are high, and one of the biggest is the lowest beef inventory in decades. “Many of our processors can’t get enough cattle to process and are running at 70% capacity,” said Young.

Write to Evie Liu at evie.liu@barrons.com