Trump-backed Michigan Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers declared in a video that "Groceries cost too much" and the Iran war "needs to end, and end quickly."
Page K2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 25 September 2026
Trump signs beef order that won't lower prices, might lower wolf population instead
As it ran on the front
Ground beef closed the week at $6.92 a pound, a record, while the U.S. cattle herd sank to its lowest headcount in 75 years. On September 4, the president signed a pair of executive orders on beef, standing in the Oval Office with farmers and ranchers behind him. The orders arrived after a different meeting: weeks earlier, the president sat down with Joesley Batista, a shareholder in JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, and then paused the "out-of-quota" tariff on imported ground beef for 90 days, letting up to 300,000 metric tons in duty-free. The sequence is on the record — meeting, then pause, then signing — even if the ledger doesn't say who at that meeting walks away better capitalized.
What the orders do not do, according to critics who reviewed them the same week they were signed, is lower the price a shopper pays at the register or the price a rancher gets at auction. What they may do is put protected wolves at risk — a species whose grocery-aisle relevance to the price of ground beef is a harder question to answer than the price itself.…
…(cont) Run the numbers against the promise and the promise comes up short. A herd at a 75-year low does not restock itself inside a news cycle. An import quota moved 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef into the country; it did not move a single American calf into a pasture. Ninety days matches the calendar to the midterms more closely than it matches the years a herd needs to rebuild, hon.
Eighteen days after the signing, a Trump-backed Senate candidate in Michigan released a video declaring that groceries cost too much, pairing that complaint with a call to end the war in Iran "quickly." One party controls both the executive order and the campaign ad; the order doesn't reach the register, and the ad doesn't mention the order. The candidate's grocery line and the president's grocery order were filed eighteen days apart under the same letterhead, and neither cites the other.
The filing that would answer the complaint — cattle inventory, price per pound, tariff relief that reaches a shopper's cart — isn't in the record. What's in the record is a paused tariff, a photo op with ranchers, a critics' warning issued the same week, and a wolf.
“They meet a meatpacker's shareholder, pause his tariff, then sign an order that skips the price tag and lands on wolves instead. Ninety days moves beef into the country; it doesn't move a single calf onto a ranch. Your grocery bill stays right where it was — somebody else's balance sheet is what moved.”
“The president acted decisively — signed the orders in the Oval Office with ranchers standing right there, that's leadership on day one. The tariff pause brings in more supply, and more supply eases prices, that's basic economics... though I guess the herd itself didn't get any bigger. Did I say that? That's not the talking point.”
The receipts
Ground beef hit a record $6.92 per pound as the U.S. cattle herd falls to a 75-year low, and Trump signed executive orders targeting beef industry reform.
· Critics Warn Trump Beef Orders 'Won't Help Consumers or Ranchers' and Could Kill Protected Wolves from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Watch live: Trump to sign beef-related executive order after easing tariffs from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.