Trump's beef bet forgets the rest of the burger
Make that quarter-pounder a double. President Donald Trump has opened the cattle gates to 300,000 tons of foreign beef outside of the current import quotas for the next 90 days.
A cynic might see this as a naked attempt to beef up Republican chances in the midterms, where the higher cost of living under Trump is set to be the defining issue.
Well, there's the problem, really. There's more to a hamburger than the beef. Trump's bet forgets the rest. And that's why Trump may end up with more gristle than meat.
"We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices," Trump said in a Truth Social post early Friday. "This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again."
American ranchers might disagree with the notion that more beef imports are good for them. But that's another issue for another day.
The inflation debate these past few years has centered on particular household products that became totemic symbols of affordability issues. Perhaps the best example is the exorbitant price of eggs under former President Joe Biden, which Trump's 2024 campaign successfully weaponized against the Democratic administration.
Trump also put a great emphasis on beef prices, hence his administration's focus on the great American cow too.
But while these are potent symbols of households struggling to pay for groceries, the cost of living isn't high or low because of any one thing.
Voters feel inflation broadly—across food, energy, housing, gas (especially bad right now due to Trump's war in Iran), debt repayments, health insurance and so on. So Trump can massage down the price of beef before the midterms. But does it make any difference if that saving is just absorbed elsewhere in rising family bills?
Let's take the rest of the burger to illustrate the point.
The price of ground beef is actually up 21 percent since Trump took office, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It was $5.863 per pound in December 2024; now it is $7.116.
For the sake of argument, let's assume beef suddenly becomes much cheaper than it was. What about the rest of the burger?
Over the same period, BLS data shows bread rolls up 3.4 percent, lettuce up 6.5 percent, tomatoes up 3.3 percent, and onions up 3.1 percent. If you like cheese, then it's good news: down 3.7 percent over that same period. Bacon also rose only 1.7 percent.
We should also add: average earnings per hour in the U.S. are up from $35.69 to $37.62 over the same period, or 5.4 percent.
But the point is not so much the specific numbers. It is that a burger is made up of more than just beef, and this same principle is true of how inflation is felt by voters. As is clear in how statisticians calculate the consumer price index measure of inflation, it's a broad basket of goods and services.
Looking like you're taking action to bring beef prices down is a great story to sell on the campaign trail. But it only matters to voters if they can feel that as a symbol of inflation soothing more broadly than beef.
Biden's expensive eggs symbolized inflation much more broadly than that single product, which is why it became such a costly political issue for the Democrats. If Trump's discount beef doesn't represent a broader decline in living costs that everyone is feeling at the same time, then it'll, well, lack any beef.