Joe Biden and the Democrats drove beef inflation to about six percent a year—more than twice the rate during the Trump years. There were many reasons why.

Biden’s Green New Deal policies drove up the cost of fuel, feed, and fertilizer. His “eat soy” range war against ranchers restricted access to grazing lands. His drunken-sailor spending fueled historic food-price inflation.

But all of these drivers were amplified — and exploited — by extreme market concentration in the beef industry.

The Big Beef Four — Cargill, JBS (Brazil), Tyson Foods, and National Beef — control 80 to 85 percent of U.S. fed‑cattle slaughter capacity and boxed‑beef sales. That’s more than twice the level where economists start worrying about monopolistic price gouging.

That is no small worry here, because middleman Big Beef commands the ultimate supply chain position. Upstream, Big Beef behaves as an oligopsony — a buyers’ cartel in which a handful of packers can push cattle prices down, weaken price discovery, and shortchange ranchers who have no real alternative buyers. Downstream, Big Beef operates as an oligopoly, shaping what supermarkets, restaurant chains, and ultimately consumers pay.

A growing stack of antitrust cases confirms the problem. Tyson and Cargill are paying $87.5 million to settle consumer claims that they conspired to inflate beef prices by restricting supply. JBS is paying $83.5 million to resolve allegations that it helped suppress cattle prices. McDonald’s alleges the same pattern.

Just how does Big Beef gouge us? First, because the Big Four own nearly all of America’s large slaughter and processing facilities, they can time “maintenance,” slow production lines, or idle operations to choke supply — even when cattle numbers are strong. That lets Big Beef shrink demand for fed cattle, push down rancher prices, and fatten profit margins at both ends.

Second, with only a few serious buyers in most regions, packers have abandoned open cash auctions for private “formula” contracts tied to thin spot markets. That system hides true price signals and lets Big Beef pay ranchers less even as it keeps retail prices high. In such a concentrated market, word of slaughter volumes and slowdowns travels fast, making coordination easy to pull off and almost impossible to prove.

Third, there is the “cut-out margin.” This insider term describes the gap between the low price packers pay ranchers for live cattle and the much higher price they collect for boxed beef. When production slows or plants go dark, that cut-out margin balloons. Ranchers get squeezed on the front end while consumers get gouged on the back end.

Here’s the good news for ranchers and consumers alike: President Trump has put Big Beef on notice that its anti-competitive behavior will no longer be tolerated. He has directed the Department of Justice to launch a full antitrust investigation into the nation’s largest meat-packing companies for “illicit collusion, price-fixing, and price manipulation.” Working with USDA, DOJ’s Antitrust Division can now subpoena documents, compel testimony, and dig into capacity decisions and data-sharing to determine whether slaughter cuts and plant slowdowns crossed the line into criminal conspiracy.

At the same time, the Trump administration is moving to break Big Beef’s middle-man chokehold by rebuilding competition from the ground up. Through USDA’s Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program and related initiatives, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is helping finance smaller, decentralized processing plants—facilities closer to ranchers and the local and regional markets they serve.

The antitrust goal is simple: more plants, more bidders, more competition, and lower transportation and processing costs in every pound of beef.

Going forward, the Trump administration will use every tool available — from the antitrust laws to the Packers and Stockyards Act — to stop abuse of market power. If the Big Four prove unwilling or unable to compete fairly, structural remedies — up to and including breaking up Big Beef — are squarely on the table.

Biden and the Democrats left the American people with a beef-inflation mess that will be tough to tame. But Trump is on the job, fighting the inflation that Democrats caused. He is doing everything possible — cracking down on Big Beef, empowering independent processors, and standing with America’s ranchers and consumers — to finally bring honest competition back to the beef case.

Peter Navarro *is the White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing. *

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