Trump Ushers in 300,000 Tons of Foreign Mystery Meat and Sends American Farmers Into Bankruptcy

0:04Joe Maxwell, thank you so much for doing this. The president has announced that we're going to be importing a lot of beef from Argentina, a huge amount of beef from Argentina. And in his justification for this, he did not mention beef prices in the United States. He said, we're doing this because Argentina is in trouble and we're trying to help Argentina. So I think this was very confusing for a lot of people watching. What do you think is going on here? Well, you're absolutely right. The president's actually made two announcements about importing beef from Argentina. The first time, which was quite a shock to all of us out here in rural America, was that he was going to quadruple the amount of beef coming in the United States.

0:47and his basis was that the people of Argentina was struggling to survive, and he liked the president. Most recently, he has announced another 330 ,000 metric tons, of which he's purchased 80 ,000 metric tons from Argentina again. And so we're beginning to really dig into that and take a look at what is the real motivation. It clearly isn't in our, we know for a fact, it's not America's farmers and ranchers. We're seeing the cattle market go down right after we just started making a profit. And we don't see the results in the grocery store. Consumers still can't afford their food. So I think, I mean, there are a lot of potential motives here.

1:34One is geopolitical. The president of Argentina is a close ally of the prime minister of Israel, unlike President Maduro, who was an opponent of, right? So that's certainly a factor in this. There may be others. What would the others be? Yeah. Well, first, I respect the geopolitical landscape, but we have to put America first. Farmers and ranchers, 63 farmers a day are going out of business while people can't afford their groceries. There is a serious problem in rural America. Farmers and ranchers are in crisis, not unlike what the president described of those folks in Argentina. So I respect that those folks may be struggling to survive, but so are America's farmers and ranchers.

2:25So I just want to make that point, Tucker, that, you know, you got to balance that and we don't see that happening in the White house what are some of the ask you to ask you to pause the why for those of us not in the business why is there a crisis in ranching if meat prices are at an all-time high when oil prices go up the oil companies thrive but meat prices have gone up and ranchers are going out of business what is the problem do you think well you mentioned oil companies uh our gas prices in my little town just went up again crude oils down gas is up makes no sense but the reason is is those companies a handful of companies control the oil from the wellhead, well actually from under the ground, all the way to the gas pump.

3:09With cattle and much of what farmers and ranchers raise, we're price takers. We don't set the price. We have to pay our inputs, whatever we're told by a handful of companies, the price is. Then we hold up what we raise and say, how much will another handful of companies give us for it. There are four companies that control 85 % of all the cattle in the United States. Two of them are Brazilian. And we have to ask them, how much will you give me for that? So when we see prices in the grocery store go up, there's not a correlation that America's farmers and ranchers are going to receive a greater benefit from that price.

3:56because in the middle, it's so heavily concentrated between the meat packers and the retail groceries. Four grocery big box stores control 69 % of all the groceries in the United States. So that concentration between the farmer and the consumer can cause the consumer to be price gouged on price and the farmer to be short paid for what the real value of their goods are in this case beef that doesn't sound like an efficient efficient market that's not the capitalism i was promised well tucker i have an ag economics degree i don't hold myself up as an economist but um it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a professor at my old econ class to to understand that capitalism doesn't work if it doesn't have the restraint of competition.

4:53Right. Right. That's one of the base fundamentals. Now, a lot of us have been trying to get both Democrats and Republicans have brought us to this horrible stage where a handful of companies can have so much influence over Congress and the Oval Office. And the fact is that when we try to do something to force antitrust enforcement, or try to put new laws in place to modernize those. Many of those were passed in the early 1900s or late 1800s. People scream, you know, the free market, folks who want to wrap themselves in the free market, which I hold myself out for the free market, they want to call me a socialist.

5:37Because I want to implement the fundamentals and make sure they're in place, like the restraint of competition, in our capitalist system. Otherwise, a handful of people get all the wealth. We launched the Rural Independence Initiative to try to have these kind of conversations. It's been both major parties have gotten us in this position. Started with Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton put it on steroids. And what we now see is this restraint in the market where new companies can't even enter the market. We can't even get new competition. Entrepreneurship is almost dead in most sectors in America.

6:21And so we say free market. And you said capitalist. I'm a capitalist. I've owned companies, businesses, owned a farm. but capitalism doesn't work unless we allow competition. And both parties have eroded competition to where there isn't any. Four companies control, I'll give you an idea on egg prices when avian flu came out. Eggs are staples, so I hope most of the viewers get this. So your eggs went up 300 % in the grocery store. The largest egg producer in the United States, Cal Maine's profits went up tenfold. The avian flu was serious. Animals died. But the fact is they only lost about 6 % to 7 % of the flock.

7:18So they screamed avian flu, which gave them an excuse to hike up prices, gouge the consumer, rake in billions of dollars. One company made more money in a quarter than it made the whole year before. And why? Because USDA, this is kind of telling, Tucker, USDA economists came out and said, well, we see prices are way far above what they ought to be based upon the facts. We expect other people to come in and in the emerging market or in this market and lower the price eggs. And four months later, the report came and said, we're not sure why nobody came in. But no one did because the concentration is so heavy, you can't get into the market.

8:06With four companies controlling retail groceries, with their sweetheart deals with the big four producers of any food item, you can't get in. And it allows those companies to gouge the consumer and short pay the farmer, and they reap all the money. they've extracted the wealth out of rural America. We've launched the rural independence initiative to put aside party politics, strip yourself of party identity. Let's roll up our sleeves and let's work together and let's understand that capitalism does not work without the constraint, restraint of competition. Well, I would think you'd have the overwhelming majority of the public on your side with that initiative?

8:48We sure hope so. We just launched, we are cross-party effort. When we make an endorsement of a candidate, we don't tell the public if it's a D or an R or an I. You know, it should be the person, right? It ought to be that they stand up against this power, this influence in Washington, D.C. They're willing to go toe-to-toe. We endorsed Congressman Massey. Now, we didn't win that. We worked hard. Others did too. So did Congressman. But we're endorsing candidates that will go toe to toe with this power and not bend to the influence in Washington, D.C. This beef deal is really about the White House and, to some degree, members of Congress, bending to the influence of this monopolistic oligarchy power and the influence that they have when they get market share, market power, they therefore get economic power.

9:50I talked about eggs gouging the consumers. They make billions of dollars. Then they invest that in lobbyists and campaign contributions in order to stay in that power. And so what happens is that that influence then, the Batista family can just walk into the Oval Office. That's the owners of the world's largest meatpacker is JBS, owned by one family from Brazil. And they can walk into the Oval Office and have a sit down. They can negotiate between the president of Brazil and the president of the United States. So those two can get together. That's the power these companies and corporations and folks now have and the influence they have, not only over our government, but other governments.

10:40And we have to come together as a people and push back against that power. Just because the battles stop doesn't mean war stops hurting the people who fight them. No, for many veterans, the effects of what they've been asked to do continue long after they return home. They're injured physically and psychologically, and those injuries can last a lifetime. Groups like the Hunter 7 Foundation are here to help them. Hunter 7 Foundation works to identify, to study, and to address the long-term health effects of toxic exposure during military service. They help veterans get care, get answers, and advocate for their health and their future.

11:19It's a nonprofit. Hunter 7 relies on the support from other proud American companies, and Black Rifle is one of those. Black Rifle Coffee proudly supports organizations that stand up for soldiers who risk their lives because no veteran should have to fight for their health by themselves. They should have the entire country's support. To learn more about this good cause, find resources for yourself or a loved one or help support the mission. Visit Hunter7.org today. That's Hunter7.org. So how do you think this specific deal came to pass? I think we mentioned the geopolitical climate. Yes. There's no doubt with the first deal last October, November, quadrupling the import, importation of beef from Argentina was because of an election in Argentina.

12:12And it wasn't looking good for an ally of the president, someone he considers a friend. And I'm not an expert on geopolitics. I won't say it was good to have him reelected or not. I just don't know. But I do know that that's a fact. And therefore, we quadrupled the importation to raise and secure the economic future. Also, we gave 20 billion taxpayer money to Argentina. And we put together a banking deal with other financers of about$20 billion plus this beef deal. But the other thing is just the influence of JBS. JBS has plants in Argentina. It's the influence of these large corporations. I'll give you how does it work.

13:14JBS is one of the most corrupt

13:20organizations in the world and they have confessed to bribing up to 1 ,800 politicians in Brazil in order to get an increase in value of their shares to borrow billions to invest in the United States in the meat market And they bought beef, pork, and chicken. So they are a protein company. And they in that. So the president is looking for money for his inaugural committee. Pilgrim's Pride, which is JBS's poultry division, gave five million dollars to the Trump and Trump inaugural committee. And for years, JBS had been trying to get on the stock exchange to get publicly listed in the United States.

14:19And shortly thereafter, they got that. Shortly thereafter, Josely Batista, one of the there's two of Wesley and his brother, met with the president. And it's reported that they talked about beef prices and Brazilian tariffs. They have been had strong relationships with the president in his prior first term.

14:51The we had a bailout money to try to help America's farmers and ranchers that I helped work on. the Trump 1 administration moved over 60 million dollars of that bailout for America's farmers to JBS to help bail them out there was a guy the name of Al Amanza in 2017 under the first term you can look this up this is fact as it's been reported and as as the investigations police investigations have indicated. The Brazilian police started an investigation called weak meat, and they believed that inspectors were being bribed to let tainted, rotted meat, abscessed meat, out of Brazil, millions of pounds.

15:45And they discovered it was so, and they notified the world that there's a bunch of bad meat on the market, beef market. China, Chile, other countries within three days closed their ports to Brazilian beef. Again, JBS is a major beef producer and we're tied into this investigation along with a couple of other meat companies. And it took the U.S. 97 days to close its border to Brazilian beef. 97 days. I always suspected, never did the research, it took about 97 days to bring in millions of pounds of rotten meat. And we were the only country that didn't close our border. So there has been favored status.

16:38Oh, the kicker here, Tucker, do you know where Al Amanza now works? No. I laugh. It's this bad. This is the kind of influence these big multinational companies have over our government. He got a job. JBSSA, that's their South American main company, their main company. He got a job. they created it as the head of global food safety. It's undisclosed how much they pay him, but he left USDA where he was the interim FSIS, and that's the Food Safety Inspection Services for the United States of America that runs the inspections to let meat in or not in to this country. And he turned around and went to work for the very people that had been caught, along with others in Brazil, other companies in Brazil, trying to move millions of pounds.

17:43And he left our borders open for 97 days in 2017. Cost of living is already making it hard to live here and it's not getting any better. Unfortunately, it's likely to get worse. And a lot of Americans fill the gap with credit cards, not just for fancy dinners, but to cover things like groceries and bills. That is a disaster. It's understandable, but don't go down that road. because there is a tax, in effect a survival tax, of 20 % interest or more. Why would you do that? Why would you hand money to the big banks when you can keep it for your family? Our friends at American Financing have a better way.

18:17If you're looking to buy your first home or refinance your current one, they're helping Americans achieve the dream of homeownership with monthly mortgage rates currently in the fives. American Financing saves its customers an average of$800 per month. That's nearly$10 ,000 every year back to you. This isn't just a loan. It's a total financial reset. So debt is tough, but there's a smart way to do it and a reckless, self-destructive way to do it, credit cards. And so we recommend American Financing. They're salary-based, not commission-based, which means they actually work for you, not the banks.

18:51They're called America's Home for Home Loans for a reason. Call 800-685-5696. 800-685-5696. or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Tucker. How is that legal? How can a U.S. government regulator leave his job and then work for the industry that he regulated? Why do we allow that? I don't know why we allow that, Tucker. Maybe you and I need to get together and a few other folks that have similar views and go after both parties until they stop doing that. We call it the revolving door. Um, it's, it's, uh, very, um, serious. Um, it is the real, it's just one component of the influence that these big companies have.

19:49They can walk into the Oval Office. They can walk into any U.S. Senator member Congress office. unfortunately in our opinion based upon farm policy the majority of D's and R's support what they want not what America's farmers want and the other influence they have is come time for appointments they line up their people from the industry to get jobs within the administration and are deep-seated then into the regulatory agencies. So they're, in the beginning, they're appointed and they're regulating themselves, you know, because they've got one of their folks inside. And then after that administration leaves, the door goes the other way.

20:40They go back home. They're kind of like guaranteed a job. They usually get, I think, I'm not sure, but I'm sure they get a star or two to put on the refrigerator like we do at home when the kids do well and pat it on the back. You know, and that is the amount of influence. That's what happens when we fight for a free market and we fail to put the safeguards in place. It's what we get when we're distracted by so many issues that they throw at us that But we, all of us, lose sight of what the real issues, and that is protecting our economy, protecting our rural communities, protecting the people.

21:20And instead, we start thinking it's more serious if we aren't protecting JBS's future or something like that. And, you know, I often joked that, you know, it didn't matter which presidential candidate won, D or R, because, you know, it was just a matter of which Goldman Sachs executive was going to be the head of Treasury back in the day. That's what I would say. And if you look, that's kind of how it worked. There really wasn't a distinction between the parties for about 40 years as it relates. But they fight over things and then they let their billionaires and their monopolistic corporations, you know, rob all of us, rob the consumer at the grocery store.

22:09They short pay the farmer. These big meat companies have been accused and have settled. They didn't admit they did it, but have been accused of price fixing wages. There was something called the Agristat system, and they shared data so they could depress wages. So it's not just farmers and ranchers. It's also the workers that get short paid. So that's the unfortunate state that we're in. And people are angry out here in rural America. We're angry. We're angry over this beef deal. We're angry that many thought things were getting better. We were starting to make a profit. And then the president takes this course of action and plummets our market.

23:03And we know that our neighbors at the grocery store going in the grocery store are not, well, we oftentimes go in the grocery store, right? So even ourselves, we're not going to see that benefit. And based upon the record that I've described, Tucker, of tainted meats and inspections, you've got to wonder, know that the global beef supply is short this year compared to last year. Why? Globally, there's less beef. I don't know all the reasons, some of which are, most are weather related. It's also been price related. Farmers around the world have been underpaid for, and so if you're going to get underpaid, you're not going to do much of it anymore.

23:52So you start selling off your herd. So weather, short pay to farmers. And so the global supply today is less than last year. Okay. So in 90 days, the president of the United States is saying, we're going to bring in to this country over 750 million pounds of beef. Now, this order for beef wasn't anticipated. It wasn't laying out there in the world's global beef supply. It's a seller's market today, right? I mean, if you have goods and it's in short supply, then why are you going to discount it 25 %? The president claims, well, I bought it for 25 % below the market. Well, who in the world is going to sell something that's in shorter supply this year than last year at a discount?

24:59Unless it's something they can't sell to anybody else. It has to make us ask, where are you buying this and what the world is it? Somebody is getting a benefit. I don't have who, but based on past track records, I'd say follow the money is what I try to say. We as people need to ask, who gets the benefit from this? It's not the farmer or rancher, cattle producer. It doesn't appear it's going to be the consumer. So who? It's somebody we're buying it from, and it's going to sell something they can't sell anywhere else, and they're going to sell it in this country.

25:48It's not just a stockpile of beef nobody wanted, because we're in a decline on supply of beef in this world, and demand is up. It's a seller's market right now. So, so many questions. I mean, you're aware that global central planners have for some time said out loud, people eat too much beef, we need to reduce consumption of beef. They're not hiding it. You know, famously, the World Economic Forum has had a bunch of different panels on this exact topic. Do you see a connection between that ideology, whatever it is, and the decline in global beef supply. Yeah, I don't think that they had to leverage their plans.

26:36I think Mother Nature has leveraged a lot of the plans and this concentration in the meat market. I do believe that it's evidence that those plans or those meetings occurred and those conversations occurred. But what I mean, we've the Western United States, as well as other areas of the world, have faced droughts. We're facing extreme weather patterns that we've not faced before that caused costs to go up. And prices didn't go up because of the concentration. Four companies control the meat market. Four companies, 85 percent. Two of them are Brazilian. this is in beef pork four companies control 68 to 70 percent chicken about 68 so it's everywhere but and a lot of the same companies control all three proteins but so um i think it's a product more of the concept and these companies are global you know u.s tyson cargill it's not just Brazilian.

27:51JBS Brazilian is the largest meat protein company in the world. And they just have been short paying farmers all over the world. There's riots, protests going on everywhere from India to Europe by farmers. And so that's what I think really has put most of the strain on the market. There's no doubt certain regulations and other things have impacted the profitability. So I don't want to take away from that. But the bigger fact has just been the constraints put on by Mother Nature and a market that's relentlessly controlled. So you describe shrinking supply, rising demand, and then a president who says, somehow I found this huge cache of beef at below market prices and i'm going to send it to the united states and you made the point i don't know where this is coming from but logic suggests it's unsellable meat and we're getting stuck with it so that raises the question i think i'm fairly characterizing what you said like are how are we sure that this is fit for human consumption like what's the track record of here i want to make Yeah, well, the track record's not good.

29:11I gave you the 2017, 97 days to close the border to tainted and abscessed meat when China, for God's sakes, three days shut down their border to it. I mean, we're always comparing ourselves to China and somehow they got it, the message and the memo a lot quicker than Al did. But I think that one of the most tragic issues, this goes to part of your question, but I think what's so important is to recognize is the United States does not have mandatory country of origin labeling on beef and pork. This case is beef. I can tell you where this shirt I have on, the one you have on, comes from and was made.

30:03I can buy a dog treat and tell me what country it was made in. When you go to the grocery store, it doesn't tell you where it comes from. So this meat is because we don't have mandatory country of origin labeling. Now, Senator Thune, Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, has a bill, the American Beef Labeling Act, and in a bipartisan vote that they voted into the farm bill a few Thursdays ago before they broke. So the Farm Bill didn't get through, but it was a bipartisan effort, which was very encouraging. But this story is very tragic. I absolutely believe that this has got to be meat. They're not going to discount in a seller's market.

30:47I'm a business person. Shoot, you know, if something's in short supply, I'm not going to say, oh, I'll give you 25 % off because I don't have enough of it. Right. So that's just not logical. So it has to be something they couldn't move somewhere else. And the track record is, is that and the president's not saying where he's getting it. That lack of transparency is one concern. And America's people won't know if it showed up in their grocery store or not. It's a lot of beef. We throw these numbers around. I'll try to put it into kind of perspective. On the average last year, the, I'll get this right.

31:31The average pounds of beef imported into the United States per month last year was 447 million pounds. That's average all year. The president is going to bring this meat in in 90 days.

31:57it is 750 over 750 million pounds of meat in 90 days that would be 250 million pounds a month more that's over 50 % increase per month of what the average was last year of being imported it's a lot of beef so when we're saying And, you know, it's not so every all the viewers need to understand there's not it's that much meat. It's not just laying around, as you said, Tucker. I mean, it's just not laying around. It's too big of a pile of beef and it's a new order. It's not like it was in the pipeline. So American consumers aren't going to know where their beef comes from because we don't have mandatory country of origin labeling.