Cattle industry groups in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas and two Republican senators said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions were hurting operations.
Page F2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 26 September 2026
Trump orders beef prices down, delivers record diesel and immigration raids instead.
As it ran on the front
On September 4th, Trump signed a beef-related executive order after pausing tariffs on ground beef imports, exempting up to 300,000 metric tons of imported beef from the higher "out-of-quota" tariff rate. The Hill covered the signing live, framed as relief for a beef-price problem that had been dogging both grocery aisles and midterm forecasts. Trump signed it in the Oval Office surrounded by ranchers and farmers, Common Dreams reported — the same outlet that noted the pause followed a meeting the prior month with Brazilian billionaire Joesley Batista, a key shareholder in JBS, the world's largest meatpacker. Critics quoted in that same coverage warned the orders "won't help consumers or ranchers," and flagged one provision as a threat to protected wolves.
That same Friday, diesel hit an all-time high of $5.85 a gallon, driven by the fallout of the administration's war on Iran, according to Common Dreams. "Trump did it! Diesel hits a new record high!" economist Dean Baker wrote, sardonically, on social media. Diesel is not a footnote to a beef story; diesel is the beef story. It is the fuel in the trucks that haul cattle to feedlots, haul feed to the cattle, haul the finished product to the store. The morning the beef order's ink was drying, the fuel that moves beef to market set a record in the wrong direction.…
…(cont) Three weeks later, that's exactly what cattle country is reporting back. The New York Times, on September 25th, quoted cattle industry groups in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas — along with two Republican senators — saying the administration's immigration enforcement actions were hurting their operations, raising fears that beef prices, the thing the September order was supposed to bring down, are headed the other way. These are red-state industry groups and the president's own party's senators, describing a Republican administration's own agency undermining a Republican administration's own executive order, on the record, in the paper.
First, the order to lower beef prices. Then the war that sent the fuel that moves the cattle to a record high. Then the raids on the people who work the operations that raise the cattle. One administration made all three calls, on one commodity, in three weeks, and cattle-country Republicans are the ones now saying which way the price moved.
“You sign a paper says beef gets cheaper, then you jack the diesel to fight a war nobody in Kansas asked for, then you send ICE to the same feedlots — that's not three separate stories, that's one hand writing the check and the other hand emptying the account. And notice who's saying it out loud: not us, Republican senators from cattle country, on the record, because the bill finally showed up in their own district. When your own guys start ratting out the math, the math was never good.”
“Look, the executive order addressed tariffs, the war addresses Iran, the raids address immigration enforcement — three different policy areas, you can't just mash them together because they all touch beef eventually. Every serious industry has adjustment periods after major trade actions, that's just — okay, I hear how "adjustment period" sounds when the adjustment is the price going up. But the senators raising concerns are doing their job, that's the system working, that's not — I should probably stop there.”
Earlier in this story
- The tariff vow that won Trump the White House now costs his party the House. By Sal · the late evening edition, 25 September 2026
The receipts
· Watch live: Trump to sign beef-related executive order after easing tariffs from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Watch: Trump to sign beef-related executive order after easing tariffs from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Critics Warn Trump Beef Orders 'Won't Help Consumers or Ranchers' and Could Kill Protected Wolves from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· 'Trump Did It!': At $5.85 a Gallon, Diesel Price Hits All-Time High in US Thanks to War on Iran 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.