Trump Ushers in 300,000 Tons of Foreign Mystery Meat and Sends American Farmers Into Bankruptcy

**Tucker Carlson** (0:04)
Joe Maxwell, thank you so much for doing this. The president has announced that we're going to be importing a lot of beef from Argentina, a huge amount of beef from Argentina.
And in his justification for this, he did not mention beef prices in the United States. He said, we're doing this because Argentina is in trouble, and we're trying to help Argentina. So I think this was very confusing for a lot of people watching. What do you think is going on here?

**Joe Maxwell** (0:30)
Well, you're absolutely right. The president's actually made two announcements about importing beef from Argentina.
The first time, which was quite a shock to all of us out here in rural America was that he was going to quadruple the amount of beef coming in the United States. And his basis was that the people of Argentina was struggling to survive. And he liked the president. Most recently, he has announced another 330,000 metric tons, of which he's purchased 80,000 metric tons from Argentina again.
And so we're beginning to really dig into that and take a look at what is the real motivation? It clearly isn't in our, we know for a fact, it's not America's farmers and ranchers. We're seeing the cattle market go down right after we just started making a profit. And we don't see the results in the grocery store. Consumers still can't afford their food.

**Tucker Carlson** (1:31)
So I think, I mean, there are a lot of potential motives here. One is geopolitical. The president of Argentina is a close ally of the prime minister of Israel, unlike President Maduro, who was an opponent of, right?
That's certainly a factor in this. There may be others. What would the others be?

**Joe Maxwell** (1:49)
Yeah. Well, first, let's, you know, I respect the geopolitical landscape.
But we have to put America first. Farmers and ranchers, 63 farmers a day, are going out of business while people can't afford their groceries. There is a serious problem in rural America. Farmers and ranchers are in crisis, not unlike what the president described of those folks in Argentina. So I respect that those folks may be struggling to survive, but so are America's farmers and ranchers. So I just want to make that point, Tucker, that, you know, you got to balance that, and we don't see that happening in the White House.

**Tucker Carlson** (2:31)
What are some of the other... Let me ask you to ask you to pause the why, for those of us not in the business, why is there a crisis in ranching? Meat prices are at an all-time high.
When oil prices go up, the oil companies thrive, but meat prices have gone up and ranchers are going out of business. What is the problem, do you think?

**Joe Maxwell** (2:49)
Well, we mentioned oil companies. Our gas prices in my little town just went up again, crude oils down, gas is up, makes no sense. But the reason is, is those companies, a handful of companies control the oil from the wellhead, well, actually from under the ground, all the way to the gas pump.
With cattle and much of what farmers and ranchers raise, we're price takers. We don't set the price. We have to pay our inputs, whatever we're told by a handful of companies, the price is. Then we hold up what we raise and say, how much will another handful of companies give us for it? There are four companies that control 85 percent of the cattle in the United States. Two of them are Brazilian. We have to ask them, how much will you give me for that?
When we see prices in the grocery store go up, there's not a correlation that America's farmers and ranchers are going to receive a greater benefit from that price because in the middle, it's so heavily concentrated between the meat packers and the retail grocers. Four grocery big box stores control 69 percent of all the groceries in the United States, so that concentration between the farmer and the consumer can cause the consumer to be price gouged on price, and the farmer to be short paid for what the real value of their goods are, in this case, beef.

**Tucker Carlson** (4:28)
That doesn't sound like an efficient market. That's not the capitalism I was promised.

**Joe Maxwell** (4:34)
Well, Tucker, I have an ag economics degree. I don't hold myself up as an economist, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a professor at my old econ class to understand that capitalism doesn't work if it doesn't have the restraint of competition.

**Tucker Carlson** (4:53)
Right.

**Joe Maxwell** (4:54)
That's one of the base fundamentals. Now, a lot of us have been trying to get both Democrats and Republicans have brought us to this horrible stage where a handful of companies can have so much influence over Congress and the Oval Office.