Bullard: Alas, A Genuine Discussion on Beef and Cattle Trade

Editor's note: The opinions expressed in the following column are those of R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard, presented here in its entirety without edits. 

In his April 9, 2024, opinion, “Speer: Protectionists Make Bad Bookkeepers,” published in Drovers, Nevil Speer provides an opportunity of a lifetime for a serious discussion on international trade in cattle and beef. You see, over the past several decades the beef industry, including multinational beef packers and their trade associations, the U.S. Meat Export Federation, and the Beef Checkoff Program and its major contractors, have downplayed the impact that imported cattle and beef have on the U.S. cattle industry. Instead, they have all been devout cheerleaders reporting nearly exclusively on the benefits of beef and cattle exports.

Compelled to criticize R-CALF USA’s recent commentary, “USDA trade policies hurt ranchers” Speer has turned over a new stone! If you have not yet read Speer’s critique of R-CALF USA’s trade discussion found here:  Speer: Protectionists Make Bad Bookkeepers | Drovers, please do so before reading further.

Speer brilliantly argues that, “To get the full accounting” about trade’s impact on U.S. cattle producers, “the credits,” meaning beef exports, “also have to be recorded” along with beef imports.

R-CALF USA has literally waited decades to hear this from the beef industry.

So, let’s now have a genuine discussion about imports and exports of beef. But first, and despite Speer’s ominous omission, we must acknowledge that the U.S. imports both live cattle (beef on the hoof) and beef (the commodity). Omitting beef produced from imported cattle, including cattle that are imported for immediate slaughter, renders Speer’s analysis incomplete and inaccurate.

When R-CALF USA analyzes trade data, we convert live cattle imports and exports to their beef equivalent and we use the same beef product categories the U.S. International Trade Commission determined were the product categories that account for trade in beef, which includes beef, beef variety meats, and processed beef, such as beef jerky and tongues.

So, if you replicate Speer’s simple arithmetic, and pretend as he does that live cattle do not add to the volume or value of imported and exported beef, then you too will erroneously conclude that over the past fourteen years, the U.S. has maintained a cumulative volume-based trade deficit in beef of only “~1.47 B lb – or roughly 105 M lb annually.”

So, let’s correct Speer’s analysis by including the trade in cattle, beef, beef variety meats, and processed beef so we get an accurate accounting of total beef trade. The data in the chart below show that over the past 14 years, the United States’ cumulative volume-based beef trade deficit was a negative ~15 B lb – or roughly a negative 1.1 B lb annually.  That means we’ve imported on average 1.1 B lb of beef more than we’ve exported each year for the past 14 years, which is many times over what Speers claims is the United States’ volume-based beef trade deficit.    

Then, Speer’s makes the same mistake in analyzing value-based trade by claiming: “During the past fourteen years, exports have outrun imports by nearly $21.5 B!   Clearly, beef producers are winning in the global marketplace.” No they didn’t, and no U.S. beef producers aren’t! The next chart shows the United States’ value-based beef trade. It shows that over the past 14 years imports outran exports by nearly $3.2 B!  

Every cattle producer knows that it’s the volume of available beef, including imported beef on the hoof, in the domestic supply chain that directly impacts demand for their U.S. cattle, not the value that the exporter receives for the beef and beef products derived from their cattle (the trickledown theory works no better today than it did when the term was first coined). Thus, every cattle producer should be concerned that current trade policies are causing the U.S. to be awash in an additional 1.1 B lbs. of imported beef and beef products on average each year. This reduces their opportunity to maintain profitable operations as well as opportunities for aspiring cattle farmers and ranchers to enter the industry.