Another Casualty of the Trade Wars? Burgers Made With Brazilian Beef

Most American hamburgers are, in fact, not quite Americans.

Grilled empanadas in the rear patio barbecues or turned in fast food restaurants are often a combination of ground meat, both of their own harvest and imported from other countries, especially Brazil. In the cafes and kitchens of the home, this global mixture of beef is chamuscada, fried and sizzle in millions of tacos, meatballs and lasagers every day.

Now, the dismantling of President Trump of the global commercial system through its imposition of broad -based tariffs is leading to changes in trade that make the winners leave countries like Brazil that produces the world encodes.

When it comes to beef, which is crucial to satisfy the hunger of Americans for cheap meat cuts, tariffs will cause Brazilian beef to be more expectation.

But at the same time, Brazil is suddenly a more attractive source for China, another huge consumer of beef, because its commercial war with the United States, and the high rates that the two nations have imposed together, has left China looking for other countries with large supplies of economic meat.

While US meat pilots. UU., Probably anticipating increasing prices, they have been supplied in Brazilian beef in recent weeks, the cordination of commercial data, the exports of Brazilian beef to China also increased in April.

As a result, Brazil’s beef prices have increased by approximately 20 percent since the beginning of April, says trade experts.

“The moment, from our point of view, has never left Brazil more favorable,” said Luiz Gustavo Oliveira, Vice President of Grupo Fribal, a Brazilian meat company. “And the world has its open to Brazilian flesh.”

The US meat processors, on the other hand, are struggling to deal with higher meat prices and what they mean for their results and how much their clients will be asked to pay.

In an attempt to keep prices, Sander, whose family has a meat processing business in the rural areas of Indiana, has begun to mix pork, which is less exhaustive, in the meat hamburgers he sells. “I am trying to give people an affordable option,” he said.

Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef, since it has surpassed the United States in the last 20 years. With fixed frogs of farmland where huge flocks of livestock can graze, and lower labor costs and other relationship costs, Brazilian farmers have conquered the global market by producing beef on larger scale and much cheaper than their competitors.

China and the United States are the two main buyers of Brazilian beef, and both countries sharply increase their purchases in recent years to keep up with the growing domestic appetite for lean and economic meat that Nethers can satisfy.

“Brazil is in a unique position,” Roberto Perosa, president of the Brazilian Association of Exporting Industries of Meat and former Secretary of Commerce of the Brazilian Government. “No other country in the world can meet this demand.”

While the United States remains the largest producer of beef in the world, its cattle, fattened with a soy or corn diet, it is more suitable for expectations and marbles famous for its rich flavor, according to the experts of the US industry.

Part of this cattle is loose to produce cheaper cuts of beef. But a large portion becomes Premium fillets such as Filet Mignon or Cod-Eye, which are consumed at home and in grills, or are exported to the rest of the world. China, the third largest buyer of American beef, imported meat worth $ 1.6 billion in 2024.

To produce the cheaper ground meat than many Americans eat daily, American pilots mix the most chubby beef, with thinner varieties and fed with grass from abroad.

“Not all beef is the same,” Glynn Tonsor, a professor of agricultural economy at Kansas State University. “And in the United States, we consume more ground meat than we produce.”

To meet the demand, the United States increased its imports of meat from Brazil from 2023 to 2024 by more than 50 percent, reaching a record of $ 1.3 billion.

But Brazilian meat is now subject to the 10 percent rate that Mr. Trump applied to almost all the commercial partners of the United States, and the longer the tariffs persist, the more likely they will have to remodel the overall trade of beef in a lasting way.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil said recently that he did not want to “make a decision” between China and the United States, the nations two largest commercial partners.

“I want to negotiate with everyone,” said Lula, who is scheduled to visit China this month. “I want to sell and buy.”

But Mr. Lula’s main foreign policy advisor, Celso Amorim, told a Brazilian newspaper that China now sacrifices Brazil “more opportunities and less risks” than the United States.

And after China revoked the export licenses of more than 390 US meat processing companies. In retaliation at US rates, Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture said that the Latin American country was anxious to fill the void.

“Someone will need to supply this meat, which was supplied by Americans,” said the minister, Carlos Fávaro.

In China, a long hero preference for cheaper pork has a new taste for fillets and hot meat pots in recent years, as the country’s middle class has grown.

Chinese imports of beef increased from less than $ 100 million in 2010 to more than $ 13 billion in 2024, with the country buying almost half or its beef from Brazil last year.

The majority of Brazilian beef were already subject to American tariffs, for the first time in the 1990s to protect US farmers from an avalanche of fastest -imported meat. Now, Trump’s recent tariffs have brought the tax to 36 percent. In comparison, Brazilian beef faces tariffs or only 12 percent in China.

With China, mostly stopping beef imports, supply chains “This product has been completing tremors,” said André Ferreira, a maritime transport specialist based in Brazil in DMS Logistics. “Then, China will look at Brazil differently now.”

Some Brazilian beef producers are already drawing ambitious plans for the future.

For Grupo Fribal, which raises, killing and packaging beef for national and international markets, businesses have been booming in recent years, since exports to China and the United States have increased.

Now, the company plans to increase its flock of cattle to 60,000 from 40,000 for next year, partly to take advantage of or simply a stronger demand stimulated by tariffs. “The moment is now,” said Mr. Oliveira or Grupo Fribal.

But the breeding, breeding and the annoyance of more cattle for beef takes time and money, which makes such plans a long -term bet that demand will continue to grow.

Brazil, an immense nation with a mild climate that favors agriculture, has more cattle than people. Since the 1970s, both large -scale livestock and family agriculture have deployed all regions of the country, including the Amazon jungle.

Even so, consecutive droughts have a toll, and Brazil’s meat production is expected to be reduced by almost 5 percent in 2025, according to Safras & Mercado, a consulting.

And if some Brazilian ranchers can increase short -term production, they may have difficulty sending more beef abroad, since the main Brazilian ports are operating almost at full capacity.

In the United States, trade experts say that American farmers will have difficulty replacing Brazil’s meat imports and fought with other challenges before tariffs. American cattle inventories have fallen to a minimum of 73 years, partly because drought and growing animal feed costs.

The demand for cheaper beef is expected to increase as economic nerves will move US consumers from expensive cuts towards hamburgers, which increases prices. The prices of ground meat in US cities have increased 43 percent in the last five years, according to the US labor statistics desk.

Even with tariffs, the United States will probably continue depending on Brazilian beef because there is no other equally large source for the US market, experts said.

This can be good news for the farmers of Brazil, said Mr. Pieosa, or Meat’s export association, but not for US consumers. “It is the American society that will have to pay the invoice,” he said.