MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The US waives beef tariffs for Brazil and Paraguay, but not for Argentina and Uruguay

For Brazil, the largest beef supplier to the US market, the measure removes for three months the out-of-quota duty of 26.4% it has paid since mid-January

US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on August 26 temporarily waiving tariffs on imports of up to 300,000 tonnes of lean beef trimmings, a measure that excludes countries already holding their own quotas in the US market, among them Argentina and Uruguay. The main beneficiaries will be Brazil and Paraguay.

The text, titled Further Ensuring Affordable Beef for the American Consumer, invokes section 404 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, which allows a president to widen a tariff-rate quota temporarily. The expansion will run for 90 days from September 1, with a maximum of 100,000 tonnes a month allocated on a first-come, first-served basis in three tranches until November 30.

The exclusion stems from a technical point. The proclamation allocates the entire additional volume to the statistical category of “other countries or areas,” which does not include exporters holding country-specific quotas. That leaves out Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, which obtained its own 13,000-tonne allocation on January 1, as well as Canada and Mexico, covered by the free trade agreement.

For Brazil, the largest beef supplier to the US market, the measure removes for three months the out-of-quota duty of 26.4% it has paid since mid-January. Paraguay qualifies through the same channel: it shipped 23,497 tonnes in January, though it has since remained below 5,000 tonnes a month.

Argentina holds its own quota, historically 20,000 tonnes a year, which a proclamation on February 6 raised to 100,000 for this calendar year. Mario Ravettino, president of the ABC Export Consortium, confirmed the country is excluded along with Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand, and that the only beneficiary would be Brazil. “We are analysing it,” he told the newspaper La Nación.

The scale of the loss is debatable. Colin Carter, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, said Argentina is not currently a significant supplier of the product covered by the programme, lean trimmings intended to be blended with US beef to make ground beef. In Brazil, the exporters' association Abiec said its members could benefit, though the requirement to sell those cuts at a discount of around 25% limits margin gains.

The White House justified the decision on the decline of the US cattle herd, which it places at its lowest level in 75 years, and on restrictions on live cattle imports from Mexico over the New World screwworm, drought and wildfires. The Department of Agriculture projects production will fall by around 4% compared with 2025. Trump warned he could revoke the measure to prevent a windfall for foreign producers if the discount does not materialise.