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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been on a media blitz defending President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, which are slamming markets and set to impact most major countries. A common thread? His love of American beef.
“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” Lutnick told Fox News (FOXA0.00%) on Wednesday evening. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Stop saying that we can’t sell our corn to India. Stop saying that we can’t sell our beef anywhere,” Lutnick added in an appearance on CNBC’s (CMCSA0.00%) “Squakbox” on Thursday, calling on countries to reexamine their trade policies. He made similar comments a few hours later in an interview with CNN (WBD0.00%).
So what’s the beef?
The European Union has banned American beef made with growth hormones since 1989, when a prohibition on the production and importation of meat from animals treated with such hormones went into effect. In 2003, the E.U. banned treating farm animals with the hormone estradiol-17β.
In 2015, the E.U. lifted a ban on U.S. beef that had been in place for 15 years over concerns about the spread of “mad cow” disease. In 2019, the E.U. voted to expand its quota for hormone-free beef imports from 18,500 metric tons to 35,000 metric tons by 2026.
Since 2015, the U.S. has sent $234.5 million worth of beef and beef products to the E.U., making it the eighth-largest market overall, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Sweden in 2016 asked the E.U. to ban imports of live American lobster because they’re an invasive species, although it didn’t come to pass. In 2020, the E.U. ended its tariffs on lobster imports.
As for Lutnick’s complaints about chicken exports, the E.U. restricted imports of American poultry because it’s legal to wash butchered chicken in chlorinated water in the U.S. Although the United Kingdom is no longer in the union, the country has kept that standard, which officials have said won’t be changing.
“The U.K. maintains non-science-based standards that severely restrict U.S. exports of safe, high-quality beef and poultry products,” the White House said in a fact sheet explaining its tariffs.
Trump also took aim at beef exports on Wednesday but instead targeted Australia, which banned imports from the U.S. in 2003 over fears of “mad cow” disease. The U.S. Trade Representative last week named Australia’s beef import ban as an unjustified trade barrier.
“Australia bans – and they’re wonderful people – but they ban American beef,” Trump said.
“Yet we imported $3 billion of Australian beef from them just last year alone. They won’t take any of our beef,” the president added. “They don’t want it because they don’t want it to affect their farmers and, you know, I don’t blame them, but we’re doing the same thing right now, starting at midnight tonight.”