President Donald Trump on Friday announced a plan to allow more beef imports into the U.S., saying it would reduce consumer costs and help ranchers replenish dwindling cattle herds. The announcement triggered bipartisan pushback and concerns from ranchers, but also sparked several controversial claims online.
The plan would allow up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef trimmings to enter the U.S. without the extra tariff-rate quota for the next 90 days. A tariff-rate quota means the government places tariffs on beef imports after a specific amount is reached. Trump’s plan would effectively allow foreign beef importers to bring in more beef than they normally would.
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He said his plan would help lower beef costs, which have risen significantly over the past few years. But American cattle ranchers criticized the plan, claiming it would directly hurt them as they face several other problems regarding their shrinking herds.
Since Trump announced the plan, a claim on social media has widely circulated that the U.S. would import beef from Argentina, specifically a batch of beef that China rejected because of the presence of chloramphenicol, an antibiotic that is banned in meat in multiple countries, including China and the U.S.
The claim
In an Instagram post, James Li, who has nearly half a million followers, claims that the Trump administration announced the U.S. was about to “import tons of beef from Argentina” to lower costs. He says this is the same beef China rejected in March after finding that 22 tons of the shipment tested positive for chloramphenicol.
Trump is buying toxic beef from Argentina to prop up an Israeli vassal state in South America, while putting American cattle ranchers out of business.
— James Li (@5149jamesli) August 24, 2026
Chalk up another win for MAGA!! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/6hSlvFrtfx
The antibiotic was banned in many countries, including the U.S. and China, for use in cattle because studies showed the antibiotic can cause severe health defects if consumed.
Li then shows a clip of Trump from October, when a reporter asked him about publicly floating the idea that the U.S. would begin purchasing beef from Argentina. When asked by the reporter about the “U.S. farmers who are suffering?” Trump responded, “Argentina is fighting for its life. Do you understand me? They’re dying.”
After the clip, Li cites statistics showing that 160,000 farms closed between 2017 and 2024 and that 77 cattle producers go out of business every day in the U.S.
Instagram issued a community note on Li’s post saying that just because a shipment of beef from a single farm in Argentina missed local inspections doesn’t mean all beef from Argentina is contaminated.
Li’s claim gained traction online, with more than 270,000 people liking the post in the past day. But he wasn’t the only person online to make similar claims. Others on X alluded to China’s rejection of the Argentinian beef and the Trump administration’s recent announcement on waiving tariffs on beef, without directly connecting the two.
What Straight Arrow found
While several parts of the claim are true, some parts are unsubstantiated, and some numbers are incorrect.
The Trump administration hasn’t said which countries the U.S. would import beef from under the tariff reduction plan. Beef imports from Argentina have increased since 2025, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But they still make up only 3.4% of total beef imports.
The claim that China rejected 22 tons of beef from an Argentinian shipment is true. The shipment originated from Arre Beef, a beef plant in Buenos Aires, Argentina. USDA data shows that the U.S. does import beef from that plant. In 2016, China rejected a different shipment of beef for the same reason from a different beef plant, Ecocarnes, according to Clarín, an Argentinian news site. The U.S. also imports beef from that plant.
It’s unclear where the recent shipment of rejected beef products is now, but the U.S. would also reject it if it detected any level of chloramphenicol, as Chinese agriculture officials did. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is tasked with testing agricultural products entering the U.S. before they hit store shelves. Any imported beef that’s not inspected and distributed is recalled, as seen with the Florida importer Corte Argentino USA LLC on Aug. 7.
The statistics on farm losses in the claim are also fairly consistent with USDA data. The department found that about 162,000 farms have closed from 2017 to 2024. The viral claim that 77 cattle ranchers are losing their jobs every day is misleading.
The claim originates from the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, which reported more than 140,000 farms of all types between 2017 and 2022. Dividing the farm loss by five years gets about 77 farms per day. But the number isn’t exclusively cattle farmers and doesn’t show a daily rate of cattle ranchers closing shop.
Looking at only beef cattle farm loss from the same census data, the loss from 2017 to 2022 is 106,884 beef cattle farms, or about 58.5 farms a day.
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