LatAm in Focus: What's on the Trade Menu? Beef

When the United States and Argentina signed a bilateral trade deal in February, one part of the agreement turned heads: Washington would be quadrupling the amount of tariff-free beef it would allow to be imported from the South American country.

Historically, the United States, like countries across the world, limits the amount of beef it imports to promote its domestic ranching industry. But with U.S. consumer prices high—and a strong relationship between the administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei—Washington increased its quota.

“The beef part of the deal ... that's a huge win for Argentina and that is presented locally as the main concession of the U.S. to Argentina,” Universidad Austral’s Francisco Resnicoff tells AS/COA Online’s Chase Harrison in this episode of Latin America in Focus.

The U.S–Argentina agreement isn’t the only trade accord with the potential to shift the South American beef trade and affect the economies of major regional producers like Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Resnicoff also explains that the EU–Mercosur agreement, signed at the beginning of the year, raised questions of how much South American beef Europe wanted to let into its borders, amid protests from European ranchers.

And then there’s China. "There's a huge event in the global beef market, which is the eruption of China as a consumer,” explained Resnicoff. Over the past decade, Chinese demand helped drive the South American beef market. This year, however, Beijing began to impose their own quotas, limiting imports.

How are South American cattlers navigating these shifting global import rules? Will the U.S.–Argentina agreement forever change the beef on U.S. plates? And what does the beef trade have to do with upcoming election in countries like Brazil? Resnicoff digs in.

Our guest

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Francisco Resnicoff is founder and senior fellow at the Center of International Strategies for Governments and Organizations (CIG), Universidad Austral, where he supports subnational governments in developing and strengthening their international integration strategies. He also serves as executive director of Fundación Movimiento al Desarrollo and is a member of the Argentine Council on International Relations (CARI). He previously served eight years as undersecretary of international and institutional relations at the Buenos Aires City Government. Earlier in his career, he was senior advisor to the secretary of agriculture, livestock, and fisheries of Argentina.