President Donald Trump angered the American beef industry and Republican lawmakers from Western states on Friday when he announced a plan to lower the price of imported beef.

“I’m extremely disappointed by this decision from the White House,” Republican Sen. Debbie Fischer of Nebraska wrote in a post on X. “We all want lower grocery prices, but as I’ve said for months, we cannot do it at the expense of American producers.”

Fischer, who is a cattle rancher, said that “flooding the market with foreign beef hurts our livestock industry.”

She was among a handful of congressional Republicans who lashed out at Trump after he said he would be signing an executive order to allow up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported “with no out-of-quota tariff” over the next 90 days.

The lawmakers said they shared the president’s goal to lower costs for consumers but denounced his plan, saying it would undercut American ranchers and flood the market with cheap foreign beef. 

The president’s announcement came as he and the Republican Party await their fate in the midterm elections in just over two months, which will determine whether they — or Democrats — control Congress come January. Voters in both parties have expressed anxiety about the soaring costs of living, including groceries and gas. 

Trump’s approval rating has suffered, even among his base. A Fox News poll last month found that the president’s approval rating among rural voters — nearly two-thirds of whom voted for Trump in 2024 — had fallen to 44% — 7 points lower than in June.  

“We want to get the beef prices down, so we’ll get them down a little bit,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “That’s what the voters want, and that’s what I want.” 

“The ranchers are great; they’re my people,” the president said. “I love the ranchers; they’ve done a fantastic job. But they admit that we need a little help, and in order to get the prices down.”

Trump dodged a question from reporters about which countries will benefit. “I don’t want to say which countries, but there are a few countries,” he said. “But they are going to be sending in the highest-quality beef, and it’s something that we need.”

Trump said in his announcement on social media that the exchange would ensure that “beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices,” which as of July was $6.89 a pound.

Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., said that the president’s heart was “in the right place” but that he had been advising Trump “for a year” against taking such action.

“American ranchers have been struggling against the packer monopoly for decades, and this will further harm them — most of whom are MAGA Republicans,” Sheehy wrote on social media.

GOP Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska said Trump’s plan “undercuts American farmers and ranchers by flooding the market with lower-quality foreign beef.”

A White House official told MS NOW Trump will formally sign an executive order within the next two weeks.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association assailed the deal, saying it would “throw cold water on the prospect of herd expansion and sacrifice long-term stability for short term messaging.”

“While America’s cattle producers share the goal of keeping groceries affordable for consumers, flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd,” the trade association said in a statement.

U.S. cattle herds are at their smallest size since the 1950s, but lowering the price of imported beef to help consumers tends to lower ranchers’ incomes and devalue their cows.

American farmers and ranchers have been hit hard by Trump’s tariff policies and war against Iran, which has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, spiking the prices of diesel and fertilizer. Meanwhile, the screwworm parasite has returned to American herds for the first time since 1966 as ranchers are still trying to recover  from a 2022 drought that cut down herd sizes.

Trump took flak from Republicans last October after he tried a similar foreign import strategy — that time with imports from Argentina, which flooded the U.S. market and depressed domestic livestock values.

“While I commend President Trump for working to lower the price of goods at the grocery store, importing foreign beef is only going to hurt our ranchers and increase prices over the long-term,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., wrote on X. “We need to do all we can [to] support them by letting the market recover.”

Nora McKee contributed to this report.

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