Trump’s savoury burger

On 21 August, on Truth, Donald Trump announced that for ninety days, up to 300,000 tonnes of minced meat would be allowed to enter the United States without the out-of-quota tariffs, which currently stand at 26.4 per cent. Yesterday, he signed the proclamation giving legal effect to the announcement. Furthermore, the White House says it has secured a commitment from importers to resell that meat at 25 per cent below current market prices. An extraordinary reduced-duty quota and an administratively set price agreed with a handshake: the state-sponsored burger is served.

The reason is that the price of ground beef has spiralled out of control, and this is not down to foreign trade. The American cattle herd is at its lowest level since the 1950s due to prolonged droughts, the cost of feed and the culling of livestock. It is a problem of domestic supply, and it is a slow-healing rift, because rebuilding a herd takes years. In July, the price of minced beef reached fifteen dollars per kilo: an all-time high, and more than ten per cent higher than a year earlier. As for remedies, however, the options are as follows: pressure on retail chains to cut their prices — in July, Walmart reduced the price of minced beef by 12 per cent — moral suasion on other retailers, and now the opening of the border. Trump chose the hamburger as his emblem, and for a decade he displayed it and served it to guests of honour, even on Air Force One and in the Oval Office. Anyone who chooses a popular symbol, however, also inherits its price tag.

After all, the tariffs weren’t protecting anyone. Imposing a 26 per cent duty on an ingredient that’s in short supply at home doesn’t protect farmers, but merely makes the burger more expensive. The American burger is made by mixing imported lean beef – sourced from Australia, Brazil and Argentina – with domestic fatty beef: it is a product that is structurally dependent on imports, and indeed, imports in 2026 are heading towards a record high of 2.7 million tonnes, whilst Brazil has, in the meantime, overtaken the United States as the world’s leading beef producer. The natural beneficiary of the new measure is none other than Lula’s country, which, having neither a national quota nor a free trade agreement, competes within the residual quota: the Brazil that Trump has hit with tariffs all year round is also the one that can save his burger.

Then there is the duration of this exemption. Ninety days is precisely the time remaining until the mid-term elections. This Trump-style measure caps a price exactly within the window in which that price is politically lethal, and expires immediately afterwards. In May, a similar plan had been put on hold due to protests by livestock farmers. Now it is going ahead, but with the electoral calendar in mind and with livestock farmers protesting once again, whilst some within the party point out that it is their own voters who feel betrayed.

Free trade as a remedy, in short. Protectionism that must be suspended to remedy the damage caused by protectionism.