Donald Trump has found a new target for his ire: America’s meat producers.
After facing mounting criticism over high grocery prices—and just an hour after being pressed on the issue while sitting next to Hungary’s Viktor Orban at the White House—Trump went on the offensive Friday, accusing U.S. meat producers of artificially inflating beef prices and calling for a Justice Department investigation.
On Truth Social, the president wrote that he had asked the Justice Department to “immediately begin an investigation into the Meat Packing Companies” who he claims “are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation.”
Trump argued that American ranchers were unfairly taking the blame for what he called “Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers, who artificially inflate prices, and jeopardize the security of our Nation’s food supply.”
“Action must be taken immediately to protect Consumers, combat Illegal Monopolies, and ensure these Corporations are not criminally profiting at the expense of the American People. I am asking the DOJ to act expeditiously,” he added.
In a follow-up post, Trump hinted at deeper wrongdoing, claiming it was “fishy” that “the price of Boxed Beef has gone up” even while cattle prices were stable or falling.
The outburst comes weeks after Trump floated a plan to have the U.S. government buy Argentine beef to lower domestic prices—a proposal he quickly abandoned amid opposition from the American beef industry and Republican senators from cattle-producing states.
“We would buy some beef from Argentina,” Trump told reporters on October 20, while traveling on Air Force One. “If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down.”
But the plan drew immediate pushback. Nebraska Senator Deb Fisher said it “wasn’t the way” to address high prices, warning that “government intervention in the beef market will hurt our cattle ranchers. The U.S. has safe, reliable beef, and it is the one bright spot in our struggling ag economy. Nebraska’s ranchers cannot afford to have the rug pulled out from under them when they’re just getting ahead or simply breaking even.”
Trump’s latest beef tirade also comes after crushing losses for Republican candidates in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, where voters cited rising costs as a major concern. Citing these defeats, Trump claimed Democrats’ focus on “affordability” was “a con job.”
“The Democrats are good at a few things, cheating on elections and conning people with facts that aren’t true,” Trump said, before listing what he described as lower prices under his administration, including gas, inflation, and groceries. “Prices are down under the Trump administration, and they’re down substantially … gasoline is way down, and the other big thing is … inflation is way down … we did a great job on groceries and affordability. The The only problem is the fake news. You people don’t want to report it.”
“The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under sleepy Joe Biden and the prices are way down.”
