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TARIFFS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Further Ensuring Affordable Beef for the American Consumer
Filed 1mo ago · Via Federal Register · The Buffoon Desk
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Merry Go - Distressed
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Chas Goodall · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
A new presidential proclamation increases the in-quota tariff amount for Argentine lean beef trimmings by 300,000 metric tons, following a February proclamation that added 80,000 metric tons for the same stated purpose of lowering beef prices.
The document attributes elevated prices to a shrunken domestic cattle herd, now at its lowest level in 75 years, alongside restricted Mexican cattle imports due to New World Screwworm concerns and drought and wildfire conditions across ranching regions.
The proclamation also blames the 'prior Administration's War on Cattle' for herd declines, while noting the Department of Agriculture forecasts a roughly 4 percent drop in beef output this year and a rise in domestic consumption.
The action anticipates that additional imported ground beef will sell at a discounted price, though the text acknowledges the first round of quota increases has not yet resolved the price problem it was meant to solve.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
There is a certain purity to a policy document that admits, in its own text, that the last version of itself did not work, and then proposes more of it at nearly four times the volume. The herd shrank over decades of drought, consolidation and cost, but the proclamation locates the culprit in a predecessor's alleged “War on Cattle,” which is the governing equivalent of blaming the previous tenant for the plumbing. When the fix arrives with a footnote conceding the problem persists, the reader is entitled to read the whole thing as a receipt rather than a remedy.
