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I BelieveGovernance and Philosophy in America Author: Joel K. Douglas
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Should American Cattle Ranchers Sacrifice for China?
Monday, 27 October, 2025
A president offers to buy beef from a country we just bailed out. Argentina. American ranchers call it betrayal. Economists say it won’t lower prices. Everyone calls it stupid.But that same country just sold seven million tons of soybeans to China instead of us. And three-quarters of their beef exports go to China. And we just gave them twenty billion dollars. And their president is our president’s ideological ally.Maybe it’s not about beef. Maybe it’s about China.But the ranchers still get hurt. The consumers still don’t see lower prices. And we don’t know if Argentina will actually pivot away from China, or just take our money and keep selling to Beijing. Maybe we weaken China’s food supply. Or maybe we just weaken our own ranchers.So…Should American cattle ranchers sacrifice for China?Act 1. Nixon and the Beef Freeze: When Politics Meets MarketsMarch 29, 1973.President Richard Nixon had a problem.Actually, he had several problems. The Senate had just voted 77-0 to investigate Watergate. The cover-up was unraveling. John Dean was about to flip. Dean knew he was going to be the scapegoat in the scandal and chose to cooperate with investigators to save himself. But today, right now, the problem was beef.Beef prices were up 20% in three months. Housewives organized boycotts. One woman in Chicago told reporters she was pricing hamburger like filet mignon. Another said her family had switched to beans and rice.Fifty million people joined them. The largest consumer protest in American history.The evening news showed empty shopping carts and angry voters. Walter Cronkite was covering it. Which meant everyone was seeing it.Nixon’s economists told him to let the market work, and it would self-correct. George Shultz at Treasury. Herbert Stein at the Council of Economic Advisers. They said this was a supply problem. Bad weather. Reduced corn harvest. Feed costs up. Drought in the Southwest meant fewer cattle. Higher prices would drive the market to adjust and incentivize production. Give it time.But Nixon wasn’t interested in time. He was interested in the evening news.He’d already broken with Republican orthodoxy in 1971. Imposed wage and price controls. First peacetime controls in American history. Froze wages. Froze prices. Took the dollar off gold. His Treasury Secretary, John Connally, had sold him on it. 5% inflation doesn’t produce great election results. The controls had worked politically. Nixon won 49 states.But by early 1973, the controls were creating problems everywhere. Shortages here. Surpluses there. The price system was breaking down. Nixon didn’t care. Controls were decisive. Presidential. You announce something and prices stop going up. At least for a while. At least long enough.On March 29, Nixon made his decision.He would freeze beef prices. No more increases. Prices were locked at current levels. Which were already at record highs. The freeze would last indefinitely.Shultz and Stein thought it was madness. You can’t freeze one price in a market economy. Everything is connected. Freeze beef and you’ll create chaos.Nixon announced it anyway.The Ranchers RespondThe cattlemen understood the economics immediately.If beef prices were frozen but feed costs kept rising, you lost money every day you fed a steer. The math was simple. The response was simpler.Stop selling cattle.“Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets.”Within days, cattle auctions reported volume dropping. Thirty percent. Then forty. Then fifty. Ranchers held cattle off the market. Some waited. Others started culling herds. Selling breeding stock they’d normally keep. Getting out entirely.The packers had fewer cattle to process. They ran plants below capacity. Sent workers home. The cattle they did get, they couldn’t make money on. Frozen prices. Rising costs.Then came the shortages.Empty Meat CasesBy mid-April, grocery stores across the country had no beef.The beef that existed was lower quality. More hamburger. Less steak. Ranchers were liquidating herds instead of finishing premium cattle. Some stores limited purchases. Two pounds per customer. Others had empty display cases.Nixon had promised to solve high beef prices. Instead, he’d created beef shortages.The evening news showed housewives staring at empty meat counters. Before, they could buy beef, even if it was expensive. After the controls, there was no beef to buy at any price.The black market appeared fast. Ranchers who’d held cattle sold directly to restaurants. To butcher shops willing to pay above the frozen price. Cash transactions. Off the books. The official market was frozen. The actual market found a way.Restaurants got squeezed the worst. They couldn’t raise menu prices because of the controls. But their costs kept rising as they competed for scarce beef. Some switched to chicken. Others reduced portions. A few high-end steakhouses closed.Washington ReactsThe American National Cattlemen’s Association flooded Washington with members. Their argument was simple. They called Nixon’s approach “The Wreck.” The freeze was destroying the industry. Ranchers were losing money every day. If it continued, there would be massive liquidation. Breeding stock slaughtered. Herds dispersed. Ranchers bankrupt. Years to rebuild.The National Farmers Union backed them. Farm-state Senators backed them, Republican and Democrat alike.Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Herman Talmadge of Georgia called it the most short-sighted agricultural policy since Smoot-Hawley.The data supported them. Cattle slaughter was up 15% as ranchers liquidated. But beef production was falling. Ranchers were slaughtering younger, lighter animals instead of finishing them. More cattle killed. Less beef produced.Nixon’s political calculus was failing. The freeze was supposed to show action. Instead, it showed incompetence. Empty meat cases were worse than high prices.The ReversalSeptember 12, 1973. Five months after the freeze.Nixon lifted it.He didn’t call it a reversal. The announcement said the freeze had “served its purpose.” That “market conditions now warrant” flexible pricing.Everyone knew what happened. The policy failed.Beef prices immediately shot up. Higher than before the freeze. Pent-up demand. Disrupted supply chains. Liquidated herds reduced future supply.By year’s end, beef prices were 30% higher than when the freeze began.The freeze hadn’t stopped inflation. It deferred it and made it worse.The Long DamageBut the real damage took years to show.Cattle don’t turn on and off. A cow has one calf a year. That calf takes time to mature. If you’re building your herd, you keep the female calves so they can grow up and have calves of their own. Half your calves don’t go to market.When ranchers liquidated in 1973, they sold breeding stock. Fewer calves in 1974. Fewer yearlings in 1975. Fewer finished cattle in 1976.The hole in the pipeline lasted into the late 1970s. Prices stayed volatile. The cattle industry lost trust in government. They didn’t have much to lose.When Carter’s Agriculture Secretary tried cattle programs in 1977, ranchers told Washington to stay out.What Nixon Was Playing ForNixon froze beef prices for one reason: Political theater. He wanted the evening news to show him taking action on inflation. He wanted housewives to see a president who cared about grocery prices. He wanted voters to stop being angry.There was no strategy beyond that. No long-term economic plan. No foreign policy objective. No national security consideration.Just make the political problem go away before the next election.It didn’t work. Not even politically. The shortages were worse than the high prices. The reversal looked weak. The long-term damage was real.The LessonMarkets work, or they don’t. Agriculture markets are mature and connected.You can’t freeze one price without creating chaos everywhere else. You can’t solve a supply problem by controlling prices. You can’t make political time match cattle cycle time.Nixon sacrificed the cattle industry for short-term politics. He ended up with empty meat cases, angry ranchers, and a disrupted market that took years to fix.Fast Forward to 2025President Trump is proposing to use beef imports to lower prices. American ranchers are furious. Economists say it won’t work. People are calling it Nixon all over again.But there’s a difference.Nixon had no strategic objective beyond the next news cycle. What if Trump does? What if this isn’t about beef prices at all? What if it’s about China?Argentina just sold seven million tons of soybeans to China instead of us. China buys three-quarters of Argentine beef. We just gave Argentina twenty billion dollars. Their president is our ideological ally.What if the beef import offer is really about pulling Argentina out of China’s orbit? What if we’re trying to become their agricultural market so they don’t need Beijing? What if this is an attempt at strategic positioning disguised as price policy?Then it’s different than Nixon’s play. It’s something else.But American ranchers still get hurt, because cattle profits need to be high to rebuild herds. Consumers don’t see lower prices. And we don’t know if Argentina will pivot to America or just take our money and keep selling to China.Nixon sacrificed the rancher for politics and got nothing.Trump might be sacrificing the rancher for strategy. But what if the strategy doesn’t work? What if Argentina takes the bailout, accepts the beef deal, and keeps selling to Beijing anyway?Then we’ve disrupted our own cattle industry. For nothing. Again.The question stands: Should American cattle ranchers sacrifice for China?And the tougher question beneath it: What if they sacrifice and we still lose?Act 2. US Beef MarketsUS beef prices are at record highs. Steak prices are up 17% year-over-year. Ground beef up 13%. Beef roasts up 14%. USDA projects beef and veal prices will rise 12% in 2025, compared to less than 2% for pork or poultry.The average American family is paying hundreds more annually just for beef.The cause is the same as Nixon’s crisis. Supply.The July US cattle herd number is the lowest in recent history.And it’s going to have a hard time growing. Beef replacement heifers are the future breeding stock. Their numbers are falling. This is year twelve of the current cattle cycle. Most cattle cycles last 9-10 years. This is the longest contraction phase in 35 years. Industry analysts are calling it a “hypercycle.”Now the decisive matter. Prices drive cattle numbers in a free market. Tight cattle numbers mean low beef production, higher prices, and strong producer margins. Producers capitalize on strong margins. They retain more heifers, keep more cows, and expand. But from the time a producer decides to retain a heifer calf in the cow herd, it takes three years for her offspring to contribute to revenue. Why Isn’t the Herd Rebuilding?In a normal cycle, record prices would trigger expansion immediately. Calf prices are high. So why aren’t ranchers expanding?First: Drought. Cows need grass and water. But because of drought, nearly all US beef cows are in states with “very poor” to “fair” pasture. When ranchers have no grass and feed costs spike, they can’t afford to keep their cattle.Second: The incentive of high prices. Some ranchers are sending cows to market because they judge they’re worth more now than the calves they would produce will be worth in 18 to 24 months. Third: Demographics and debt. The average rancher is nearly 60. Should they sell today while prices are good, or take on debt at high interest rates to purchase expensive cattle and maintain infrastructure? Many are choosing to exit. Taking their profits. Not rebuilding.Then there’s New World Screwworm. It’s a parasitic fly eradicated from the US decades ago. Flesh-eating larvae that burrow into cattle and kills them slowly.Now it’s back at the Mexican border. The government banned live cattle imports from Mexico. In 2025, we imported 80% fewer cattle from Mexico.So the breeding herd is at a 75-year low from drought and liquidation. The normal supply of Mexican feeder cattle that would help is gone because of disease. And ranchers are selling heifers for slaughter instead of keeping them for breeding because current prices are too good to pass up.This is why beef prices are high. This is why they’ll stay high. The market is signaling strong demand, and low supply. Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina!October 14, 2025.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a $20 billion bailout for Argentina. Presidents Trump and Milei are allies. Disruptors of government. Trump wants Milei to succeed. So we gave Argentina $20 billion.Within days, Argentina suspended its export taxes on soybeans.China saw the door open. They bought seven million metric tons of soybeans from Argentina. In the same timeframe, China bought zero soybeans from the United States. American soybean farmers were furious. We bailed out our direct competitor. Who immediately undercut us and sold to China.Then a week later, President Trump posed we could buy beef from Argentina to “bring our beef prices down.” The ranchers exploded. Wyoming-based Meriwether Farms addressed President Trump directly: “We love you and support you—but your suggestion to buy beef from Argentina to stabilize beef prices would be an absolute betrayal to the American cattle rancher.” Ranchers Know The Numbers Don’t WorkEconomists look at the proposal and see Nixon all over again. Government intervention to solve a political problem that won’t actually solve anything.Argentina currently accounts for 2% of total US beef imports. Even if we doubled Argentine imports overnight, it would be less than 0.7% of US beef consumption. Statistically invisible.But not invisible at the Argentinian polls. Argentine midterm elections were two days ago, October 26. Six days after Trump’s announcement. A US commitment to buy Argentine beef on top of the $20 billion bailout is a political gift. It signals American support. It gives Milei something to campaign on.The American rancher sees this clearly. We’re sacrificing their market stability for Argentina’s election prospects.Let’s remember that high beef prices are the market working. The herd is at 1951 levels and needs years to rebuild. Ranchers need high prices to recover. But Trump made a promise. Lower prices. Win midterms.Maybe this isn’t about beef at all. Act 3: The China QuestionWait. What if this isn’t about beef at all? Let’s look at the pieces again.Argentina just sold seven million metric tons of soybeans to China. Three-quarters of Argentine beef exports go to China. China is Argentina’s largest agricultural customer. And we just gave Argentina twenty billion dollars.What are we doing? China needs food. One-point-four billion people. Not enough arable land. Not enough water. They import massive amounts of protein. Brazil for soybeans. Argentina for beef and soybeans. China’s food security depends on South American agriculture. If we want to pressure Beijing without firing a shot, we threaten their food supply.What if the beef import offer isn’t about lowering American grocery prices? What if it’s about making Argentina an offer: “Sell to us instead of China. We’ll be your market. You don’t need Beijing.”If Argentina pivots toward the United States agriculturally, China loses access to a critical food source. They’d have to compete for Argentine exports instead of having guaranteed supply. That’s leverage. That’s strategic positioning.And if other South American countries see Argentina succeed by aligning with Washington instead of Beijing, maybe they reconsider their relationships too. Brazil. Chile. Uruguay. Suddenly China’s food security looks a lot more uncertain.But here’s the problem. American ranchers still get hurt. Smallest herd in seventy-five years. They survived drought. They liquidated herds. They held on through the worst of it. Now prices are finally high enough to rebuild and recover financially. High enough to make cattle ranching viable again.And the government is proposing to flood the market with foreign beef.The signal it sends is devastating: “We’ll undercut you to maybe achieve foreign policy objectives.”The ranchers who survived the drought need high prices. Not as profit-taking. As survival. As the financial foundation to rebuild herds over the next three to five years.If we artificially suppress prices now, even symbolically, we extend the recovery period. We punish the survivors. We signal that their industry is expendable for other priorities.And consumers? They still don’t see lower prices. Two percent of imports won’t move the needle on a twenty-eight-billion-pound annual market. The strategic play doesn’t help them either.The Hamilton-Jefferson SplitThis is one of the oldest arguments in American governance.Hamilton would say that national interests transcend business interests. If weakening China’s food security serves American strategic goals, we do it. Even if cattlemen get hurt. Even if it’s unpopular. Statecraft requires hard choices. The republic’s long-term security matters more than one industry’s short-term profits.Jefferson would say: The rancher is the backbone of the republic. We don’t sacrifice them for abstract geopolitical games. They feed the nation. They embody American self-sufficiency. When government chooses foreign allies over domestic producers, it betrays the people it’s supposed to serve.And there’s still a lot we don’t know. Might never know. Will Argentina actually pivot? Or will they take American money and keep selling to whoever pays most, which is China?Does weakening China’s food security actually give us strategic advantage? Or does it just make them more aggressive in securing alternative sources? More investment in Africa, more pressure on Southeast Asia, more reason to invade Taiwan for its agricultural imports?Agricultural markets are mature, and they are globally connected. Food insecurity drove much of Japan’s expansion before World War II in the Pacific. Do we really think China would just accept it? And the hardest question. Let’s say it works. Argentina pivots. China’s food security weakens. We gain strategic leverage. Was sacrificing American ranchers worth it?Or is it more likely that American ranchers pay the price for nothing?The Question RemainsShould American cattle ranchers sacrifice for China?Not “sacrifice to help China.” Sacrifice to hurt China. To weaken China’s food security. To pull Argentina out of Beijing’s orbit. To strengthen American strategic position in South America.That’s the real strategy. And it’s not necessarily wrong, strategically speaking. A nation that can’t feed itself is vulnerable. If we can create that vulnerability for a competitor, traditional statecraft says we should.Hamilton would make that case. National security transcends one industry’s profits. The long game matters more than short-term pain. Yes, the ranchers suffer. That’s the cost of statecraft. Nations don’t survive by protecting every domestic interest. They survive by accumulating power and leverage.Even if Argentina keeps selling to China, we drive uncertainty. It forces Beijing to diversify, to hedge. A confident China is a bold China. Maybe the smarter play is to create enough uncertainty that Beijing has to think twice about Taiwan and the South China Sea. The ranchers are important, but temporary. American power is permanent. We can rebuild the herd in five years. We can’t rebuild strategic position if we lose it.Jefferson would say Hamilton is asking the wrong question. It’s not whether this particular strategy works. It’s what we become when we decide it’s normal to sacrifice the American people for abstract geopolitical advantage.A republic that asks its productive class to absorb the costs of power has already lost something essential. Not militarily. Not economically. Constitutionally. The rancher isn’t a resource to be expended for statecraft. The rancher is the republic. When government starts treating citizens as expendable for long-term strategy, we stop being a Republic and start being an empire.And America owes allegiance to no king.Yes, Argentina will probably keep selling to China anyway. Yes, the strategy is speculative. But even if it worked perfectly, even if Argentina pivoted and China weakened and we gained leverage, the cost would still be wrong. Because we’d have established the principle that your livelihood is acceptable collateral for our vision of power.If we accept that principle, where does it end? The next sacrifice is easier. And the one after that easier still. Until the Republic has sacrificed so much of itself in pursuit of power that there’s nothing left to be powerful for.Our question: Should American cattle ranchers sacrifice for China?The real question: Does statecraft justify the cost of destroying the American rancher? The answer is: not this time. Probably not ever.May God bless the United States of America. Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/dada/yatagarasuLicense code: 6IWGYQ0DNPHBJY6K Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
