WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed two beef-related executive orders Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in an Oval Office event with ranchers and farmers — one aimed at letting ranchers and farmers butcher, process, package, and sell their own products directly to consumers, and another pushing country-of-origin labeling on foreign beef — while publicly naming Brazil and Argentina among the countries supplying a temporary tariff-paused lean-beef import program, The Hill reported.

“It’s coming from Argentina. It’s coming from Brazil,” Trump said of the tariff-paused imported beef. “It’s coming from a couple of other places. We have our inspectors down. It’s very clean. It’s very good.” Last month the administration announced a pause on tariffs covering 300,000 metric tons of beef for 90 days, to be sold at a 25 percent discount below market price — a framework also reflected in a Federal Register proclamation increasing the in-quota quantity for lean beef trimmings. Cattle groups and some GOP lawmakers criticized the import relief as undercutting U.S. ranchers even as the White House framed it as temporary help while herds rebuild.

“We’re doing it in a very limited fashion because our ranchers can handle it, but our ranchers really needed a little bit of help, and our ranchers want the prices to be down too,” Trump said. The White House also pushed back after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump met with Joesley Batista — who shares control of JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker — a day before the import announcement. Batista and his brother Wesley were fined in 2020 by the Justice Department over Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges tied to a bribery scheme used to expand U.S. operations, The Hill noted. The tariff pause also follows a separate recall of nearly 30,000 pounds of Argentinian beef distributed in Texas and Florida.

Trump said the “Big Four” U.S. beef processors — Tyson Foods, JBS S.A., Cargill, and National Beef Packing Co. — hold a “monopoly” on the sector. “I’ve heard all about it. I’ve been listening to it … and they say they’re a very nasty group, very difficult to deal with,” he said. “And they cost our farmers a lot of money, and they cost our ranchers a lot of money, and they cost the public a lot of money in grief, and we’re not going to let it happen any longer.” On the labeling order, he said he would put the country-of-origin push before Congress: “We’re putting it in front of Congress right away. It should be no problem.” Concentrated packer power and tariff politics collide here in plain view — a president attacking the Big Four’s gatekeeping while opening a temporary import window named to Brazil and Argentina and asking Capitol Hill to force origin labels onto foreign beef.

Sources