US President Donald Trump announced on Friday (28) that he is preparing measures to let American farmers and ranchers process their own production, in a new offensive against concentration in the country's meat industry, according to Folha de S.Paulo. The move could hit two companies with Brazilian ties: JBS, the world's largest meat processor, headquartered in São Paulo, and National Beef, controlled by MBRF, the company formed by the merger of Brazilian packers Marfrig and BRF.
The announcement came two days after Trump said on a podcast that there is a monopoly in US beef processing, and about two weeks after his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, accused the sector's four largest companies of operating as a cartel. On Friday, without naming the companies, Trump wrote: "There are, essentially, four of them, a completely uncompetitive number, and they make life miserable for our wonderful farmers and ranchers".
The four biggest US beef processors, JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill and National Beef, together control about 85% of the market. Think of it this way: nearly every American steer has to pass through one of four gates before it becomes a burger. Whoever controls the gate sets the price paid to the rancher on one side and the price charged at the supermarket on the other, and keeps the spread.
The backdrop is rising prices. A kilo of ground beef reached US$ 6.76 (about R$ 35.10) in January, up 18% from a year earlier, according to Federal Reserve data cited by Folha. Official figures show beef inflation of 9.4% in the 12 months through July, per the Labor Department. As the agribusiness site AgFeed noted, Trump's promise lands in a November election year, with food inflation squeezing voters' budgets.
What we still don't know
Trump did not detail which rules he plans to change. He said only that a significant share of the big processors' ownership sits outside the United States and that he authorized legal paperwork to give producers "the right to process their own food". Gazeta do Povo reported back in May that the administration had widened an antitrust investigation into the four biggest packers, but there is no public information on where that probe stands. Folha reached out to JBS and MBRF through their press offices and did not say whether they responded.
For anyone following the sector, three things are worth watching: the text of the order Trump promised, the progress of the Justice Department's antitrust investigation, and how JBS and MBRF shares react. If the measure becomes real, the first practical sign will be ranchers gaining room to process and sell their own beef, a business now concentrated in the four giants.