President Donald Trump has identified his prime suspect in the great affordability crisis of 2025: foreign-owned meatpacking companies.
The finger-pointing came shortly after Trump was confronted about cost-of-living pressures affecting Americans, with the president insisting groceries were “way down” under his leadership.
Trump, lashing out on Truth Social, announced that he had instructed his Department of Justice to investigate the “fishy” business going on with rising beef prices.
“While Cattle Prices have dropped substantially, the price of Boxed Beef has gone up—Therefore, you know that something is ‘fishy,’" Trump wrote.
“We will get to the bottom of it very quickly. If there is criminality, those people responsible will pay a steep price!”
In a separate post, Trump stated that the DOJ will begin their investigation into meatpacking companies he claimed are driving up the price of beef through “illicit collusion, price fixing, and price manipulation.”
“We will always protect our American Ranchers, and they are being blamed for what is being done by Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers, who artificially inflate prices, and jeopardize the security of our Nation’s food supply,” Trump wrote.
The U.S. beef industry is largely controlled by four corporations: National Beef Packing Company, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and JBS.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie pointed out on Twitter that Trump may want to start his investigation with JBS—one of the two majority foreign-owned meatpackers, which donated $5 million to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee in January through its subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride.
The donation was the largest corporate contribution to Trump’s inauguration festivities and prompted Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren to question whether a pay-for-play arrangement was in place after JBS was granted approval to list on the New York Stock Exchange in April, following years of trying.
Cattle ranchers across America are reportedly up in arms about the “Brazilian meat cartel” cozying up to Trump, according to Montana Farmers Union president Walter Schweitzer.
JBS, the largest meatpacking company in the world, has been forced to pay more than $83 million in anti-trust settlements over multiple suspected incidents of price-fixing.
The cost of ground beef has risen by approximately 51 percent since 2020 due to a combination of many factors, including climate change-induced droughts, shrinking U.S. cattle populations, and tariffs on imported beef. In October, Trump suggested quadrupling beef imports from Argentina, much to the annoyance of American producers.
Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted that she was already on the beef case, with Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater taking the lead on the investigation alongside Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.
However, experts have said that the investigation is unlikely to solve the issues and, if anything, will drive prices up.
“The packing industry in this country has been investigated and researched for 50 years,” agricultural economist Derrell Peel at Oklahoma State University told the Associated Press.
“If the outcome is to break up the big packers, the outcome will be higher beef prices for consumers, and lower cattle prices for producers.”
It’s not just beef either. Grocery prices overall have climbed 2.7 percent between September 2024 and September 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and are up 1.4 percent since January, when Trump took office for the second time.
Trump campaigned on the immediate lowering of grocery prices “starting on day one.” Despite the official statistics, he has repeatedly claimed that prices are in fact lower.
“Rents are up, groceries are up and people‘s incomes aren‘t supporting their families,” Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna told CNN in response to Trump’s proposed beef investigation on Friday.
“It would be smart for him to… focus on what he got elected to do, which was lower prices and create good jobs. That‘s what American people want.”
