(Radio Iowa) – President Donald Trump says the U-S may buy beef from Argentina to bring beef prices down for consumers. Bill Bullard is C-E-O of R-CALF USA, the largest trade group for cattle producers. He says the president’s attention is welcome because the U-S cattle market has been broken for decades. “The share of the consumer’s beef dollar flowing back to the producers has been reduced,” Bullard said, “while at the same time the share captured by the packers and retailers in this highly concentrated industry have been increasing.”

Bullard says importing more beef in the U.S. absolutely the wrong thing to do. “It has been imports that have displaced our domestic cow herd over the last several decades, bringing us to the brink of having the lowest, smallest herd size in the history of our industry,” Bullard said. Bullard says the Trump Administration needs to focus on concentration in the meat packing industry.

Four companies are buying 85 percent of the cattle that are slaughtered in the U-S, plus the Food Industry Association says meat sales in mega-retailers like Walmart are growing, while the amount of meat sold in local grocery stores is falling. “We have a handful of packers, a handful of retailers that are interfering with competitive market forces and they are exploiting producers on end of the food supply chain and consumers on the other,” Bullard said.

Bullard says Trump could help cattle producers by placing a quota on imported beef and impose higher tariffs on beef imports once that quota is reached.