In-Depth: A Sleeping Giant — Argentina’s Meat Industry Unshackled

American shoppers complaining about high beef prices prompted the usually protectionist Trump administration to drop its own tariffs on beef and encourage more imports from Argentina.

But when Argentines — who are among the world leaders in beef consumption — have suffered under skyrocketing prices, governments in Buenos Aires have gone much further. Time and again over the last 80 years, interventionist policies have reduced or halted beef exports in the name of domestic affordability.

Historically Argentina’s most important sector, agriculture as a whole has faced recurring cycles of caps and even bans on exports, as well as export taxes, “especially for meat, because, you know, the meat price goes up, and you have a revolution,” development expert Lilyan Fulginiti, a professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincon’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Argentine native, told Meatingplace. “Meat is a very sensitive political commodity.”

She co-authored a 1990 economics journal article concluding that “government interventions in Argentine agriculture substantially reduced the growth rate of output” from 1940-80.

Comparable to drought

A period of official export deterrence policies from 2005-10 led to a drop in beef export volumes by more than two thirds. Around the same period, the national cattle herd of 58 million dropped by 10 million head, comparable to the impact of a long-running drought. A later government imposed an outright ban on beef exports for 30 days in 2021.

Bountiful agriculture and burgeoning global trade made Argentina hugely prosperous by the late 1800s, led by iconic beef from the pampas — a grassy, fertile plain twice the size of Texas with more reliable rainfall — and by the early 20th century it was one of the richest per capita countries in the world.

Argentina took a populist turn in 1946 under President Juan Peron, spawning a leftwing nationalist movement that has dominated politics for generations. The country has suffered a parade of economic ills: deficit spending, stagnation, corruption, currency crises, government defaults, recession and bouts of soaring inflation. Outright hyperinflation in 1989-90 — 2,600% annually — set off riots, and a 1998-2002 downturn met the definition of a depression. In the 1960s, Argentines still had higher per capita income than Italians, but today, per capita GDP is half of Italy’s, on a level with China and the Dominican Republic.