WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday formalized a 90-day plan to slash tariffs on imported ground beef, betting that flooding the market with 661 million pounds of cheaper imports can blunt one of voters' sharpest inflation complaints before the midterms — even as its own economists warn the savings at the register will be modest at best.

The proclamation allows up to 300,000 metric tons of beef, mostly lean trimmings used in ground beef, to enter the country at sharply reduced tariffs, with the rate on roughly 220 million pounds a month dropping from 26.4% to about 2 cents a pound starting Sept. 1, according to Capital Press' breakdown of the tariff mechanics. President Trump has said the imported product should sell "25 percent below current market prices," and the proclamation includes a clause allowing the administration to end the program early if retail prices don't fall.

The math behind the politics

The average price of a pound of ground beef has climbed to $6.89, up from $5.92 in January 2025 — a nearly 57% jump over five years driven by a shrunken domestic cattle herd, per NPR's reporting on the pricing data. But economists are skeptical the import surge will move that number much. University of Tennessee livestock economist Andrew Griffith put it plainly: "I don't think it's going to be $1.50 [less] ... we might see a quarter to 35 cents [less]." For a typical American eating about 60 pounds of ground beef a year, even an optimistic 25-cent-per-pound savings works out to roughly $15 annually.

Michigan State University economist Jaime Luke raised a separate question — whether the 300,000-ton figure represents genuinely new supply or just existing trade getting a tariff break, saying it "maybe isn't as big of a number as you might think."

"UNDERCUTTING AMERICAN FARMERS AND RANCHERS WITH INFERIOR PRODUCT FROM FOREIGN COMPETITORS DOES NOTHING TO CREATE MARKET CONFIDENCE."

That line comes from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, one of several domestic ranching groups pushing back hard. R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard said the group was "disappointed that the president has taken action to increase the domestic supply of beef with foreign beef that will now compete directly with beef produced by America's ranchers." Notably, criticism has also come from inside the GOP: Republican Sens. Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Tim Sheehy of Montana, both from cattle states, warned the import surge could undercut the ongoing rebuild of a domestic herd already at multi-decade lows.

The stakes are squarely political. The plan lands roughly 10 weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms, with grocery prices consistently polling as a top voter concern — prompting the Washington Post to frame it as the opening of the political battle over food costs heading into the fall campaign.

USDA and the U.S. Trade Representative's office are now tasked with tracking whether retail prices actually move once imports start flowing Sept. 1. With the 90-day window — and its built-in early-termination clause — the real test of whether the plan dents prices, or gets scrapped, will play out through Thanksgiving, right in the middle of the midterm stretch.