President Donald Trump defended his decision to pause tariffs on some beef imports, even as Republicans criticize the decision.“Prices are coming down very rapidly, and now beef is starting to come down,” Trump told The Glenn Beck Program on Wednesday. “The meats, the beef is starting to come down, but prices have come down very, very, very substantially.”Trump announced on Friday that his administration would permit up to 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported over the next three months without tariffs. Farm-state Republicans from cattle country have opposed the move, saying that American ranchers could be undercut by foreign countries like Argentina.
“Wyoming ranchers produce the highest quality beef in the world,” Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) wrote on X. “Our ranchers don’t ask for special treatment. They simply want a fair marketplace. It needs to be easier – not harder – for Wyoming ranchers to feed America.”Glenn Beck, himself a rancher, prodded the president to investigate “the meat processing cartel.” Beck claimed the so-called cartel prevented him and other ranchers from butchering their own cattle amid “all of the federal regulations” and “insane” inspections.“So you’re saying, with, with less regulation, you think that the ranchers and farmers would do a very good job of processing the beef?” Trump asked. “This could be a very good call for ranchers and farmers, no, for the country … This is a very big thing you just told me, though, because you just gave me a very good idea. OK, good, good, very good. I love the call. I love this call.”During the almost 20-minute interview, Trump also complained about Canada as the U.S. and its northern neighbor escalate tariffs against one another after trade negotiations collapsed last week.“They don’t have anything that we have to have,” he said. “I mean, there are a couple of things that would make it a little inconvenient, but we can get them elsewhere. And it’s time to teach Canada you can’t do this anymore.”Earlier, Trump told Beck that he did not “think” Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was “dead,” only “very seriously wounded.”“If he is, they’re putting on a pretty good show because they talk about, you know, going back to talk to him all the time, you know, to get a final blessing on things,” he said. “It’s not the most honorable group.”TRUMP’S PRO-FAMILY AGENDA HAS WON BIPARTISAN SUPPORT, BUT ECONOMIC ANXIETY CLOUDS GOP MIDTERM HOPESIn addition, Trump downplayed CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s four-hour trip to Moscow to speak with Russian intelligence counterparts, describing it as “very sort of semi-routine.”“Now something may come out, you know, out of it,” he said, before referring to the Russia-Ukraine war. “We’re working very hard to get that war ended.”
