By Burt Rutherford Contributing Editor

“It’s like a big weight was lifted off my shoulders.” That’s one reaction after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. It’s likely that sentiment was repeated throughout cattle country.

While President-Elect Trump enjoyed broad rural support, voters from all walks of life looked at inflation and lack of border security and decided more of the same simply wouldn’t do.
As Trump moves quickly to nominate members of his cabinet and other federal posts, beef producers see early indication that things will indeed be different. But if Trump stays true to his campaign rhetoric, international trade looms large as a concern for not just beef producers, but all ag producers.

Much of that eventual policy will depend on appointments that, at press time, hadn’t been made. Beef industry consultant Nevil Speer is waiting to know who the next secretary of agriculture will be before doing any major necropsy on what a Trump administration might potentially mean for the beef business and all of agriculture. His second question was answered with the appointment of Matt Goetz as attorney general.

“That’s because both of those are important,” he says. “And in general for beef producers, there will be less regulation. But I think the big wild card will be trade.”

That’s one of the points of uncertainty that agriculture has about a Trump presidency. While “Made in America” is a theme that rings loudly across the rural landscape, Speer points out that trade restrictions like tariffs on imported products always result in retribution. “And it seems like it’s always the beef industry first.”

But it’s more than just beef producers. “Many beef producers do something else, like farm,” he says. “We export a lot of corn to Mexico. And the last thing corn and soybean producers need right now is a trade war.”

“In general for beef producers, there will be less regulation.”

– Nevil Speer

That concern aside, however, Speer thinks a Trump presidency will be good for the beef business. How good and which segments will benefit the most remains to be seen.

According to Ethan Lane, vice president of government policy for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), a second Trump term creates an unusual set of circumstances. “We’ve done this before. We know kind of what a Trump administration looks like. We had a great relationship with the Trump administration the last time around.”

Indeed, his last turn at running the country showed that the President-Elect was a fan of farmers and ranchers. “He cares what we think and wants to craft policies that support rural America,” Lane says. “And that’s a good thing. We expect that the second time around.”

Lane says NCBA thinks the Trump administration will focus on re-instituting some of the good work that happened during the first term. “He made significant progress on reigning in the National Environmental Policy Act and fixing some of the underlying problems with the Endangered Species Act (ESA), at least as many as can be fixed in a regulatory sense.”

To truly fix the ESA, statutory changes will need to be enacted, Lane says. But the first Trump term addressed critical habitat, timelines and made some technical changes that were beneficial for landowners.

“I know there’s a lot of consternation on tariffs. The president’s been clear that’s an avenue he wants to go down,” Lane says. “For all of us who export product and need those healthy trade relationships, that’s concerning and something we look forward to expressing our views.

“That’s part of the process and something we’re excited to get started with. But this poses a lot of opportunity to have an administration that cares what farmers and ranchers think and is wanting to turn wrenches and fix some problems.”

Keep

However, Dan Halstrom advises the beef business to keep things in perspective.

“I’m looking at it pretty optimistically because the first Trump administration, especially late in the administration, had quite a few positive deals,” says the president and CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation. “In 2020, they renewed the USMCA, which was the new version of NAFTA.” That he would argue for the beef business in particular was the biggest success in terms of Canada and Mexico business.

“Then you had the Japan-U.S. ag agreement, also a very big deal,” he recalls. Prior, the U.S. was at a significant disadvantage on tariffs. “Now we’re much more competitive There’s still a tariff. But we’re not at a disadvantage.”

The last high-profile trade agreement was the China Phase 1 agreement. “That also has reaped benefits in terms of the percentage of cattle that qualified for China,” which also reaped more dollars. “We were doing a couple hundred million dollars a year prior to that agreement. And we peaked in 2022 at almost $2 billion,” he says.

And we’re still benefiting from those wins today, he adds. “Two years ago, at a time of record-large beef production, we set a record in beef exports at $11.7 billion. And this year, we’re on track to be the second or third highest ever at around $10.5 billion.”

So, tariffs are not new. “We’ve been living with tariffs in China and still doing big business,” he says. “Those tariffs that originated from the steel and aluminum tariffs that we put on China are still there today and we’re still doing business.

“So it’s not impossible to do business even with tariffs. It’s not ideal, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not impossible. But as it relates to some of the other ag agreements like KORUS in Korea, CAFTA in Central America, USMCA with Mexico and Canada, I’ve got to think that we’re sitting in pretty good shape because we’ve got agreements. They’re not perfect, but they’ve been a pretty good foundation for business that for beef has grown tremendously over the last five, 10 years.”

Back in D.C.

Beyond that, having both the House of Representatives and the Senate controlled by Republicans creates a unique situation.

“First and foremost, it makes some of the issues we knew would be top of the agenda maybe a little bit easier,” Lane says. “Taxes are going to be a major issue going into next year with the expiration of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2025. That’s the Trump tax package. That has some seriously impactful policies in it for landowners and cattle producers. Not the least of which being the increase to about double what the debt tax limit was previously, as well as provisions under section 179 and 199 for various deductions that producers use to make sure they can manage their tax burden.”

Addressing those tax provisions was going to be a rocky process with a divided government, he says. “That’s not saying that all three pieces of that equation being in Republican hands means it’s a no brainer, but it certainly makes that conversation a little easier, particularly since the incoming president feels a lot of ownership of the expiring tax bill. So I think, he’s going to want to see that retained, and that’s good news for cattle producers across the country.”

Regarding the Farm Bill, “We have a solid Farm Bill voted out of the House Ag Committee with bipartisan support. It’s been stuck, but perhaps this creates an opportunity to get something done on that and put it to bed. So we’ll see what’s possible there.”

But don’t expect easy sledding. “We’re going to continue to see the usual wrangling on Capitol Hill over all the issues that the Republican conferences had challenges with, even with the majority over the last two years,” Lane says. “So we can’t assume just because everybody’s in the majority, some of that stuff’s going to just completely disappear, but maybe it gets a little bit easier to work with Donald Trump and the White House, and we’ll be keeping an eye on that.”

Clearly, Donald Trump is going to have some thoughts about what kind of agenda he has and where he wants to put his focus his first two years prior to the midterm elections. “It’s early still. We know he has said a lot on the campaign trail,” Lane says. “Now, it’s time to translate that into an action plan, working with his partners in Congress. So we’ll be watching to see what all makes the shortlist for that first year. It’s a sprint to midterms now. And while that seems like a long time, two years can go by in the blink of an eye.”