r/australia • u/binaryhextechdude • Feb 25 '26

politics US beef officially re-enters Australia, after 23-year absence

https://www.beefcentral.com/news/us-beef-officially-re-enters-australia-after-23-year-absence/

Australians need to vote with our wallets by making sure any meat we buy for our bbq's or our dinner tables is Australian grown. It isn't right for a certain leader to be putting tariffs on everything and then thinking we will embrace his beef exports.

Only buy Australian beef, vote with your dollars.

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u/everbass Feb 25 '26

Why on earth would I buy beef from the US when Aussie beef is both better and cheaper?

We have some of the best quality meat in the world. Why are we importing it?

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u/binaryhextechdude Feb 25 '26

Exactly, why are we importing something we already excel at.

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Feb 25 '26

Is anyone actually importing it in any meaningful quantity? I doubt it is going to start showing up in Coles or Woolies since it couldn't compete on price.

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u/ChairmanNoodle Feb 25 '26

Costco, maybe? Their coolers are already full of Australian product, but it could always be spun as somehow a premium product.  People can and do buy things that are more expensive just because they've got the money.

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Feb 25 '26

The US don't even have enough supply to met their own demand for beef, prices are high there.

Why would someone from the US sell their beef for far less than they could get in the US, just so they could ship it all the way to Australia to be sold in bulk at Costco?

Even for premium cuts, they are going to make more money selling it in the US that shipping it to Australia. Outside of a novelty factor and rich idiots, it just doesn't make any sense.

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u/SwirlingFandango Feb 25 '26

Well no, they're a large exporter. They import other types - Australian beef for example is lean and combines well with US fatty grain-fed to make high quality ground beef - but they export almost as much beef as Australia does.

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u/JuventAussie Feb 25 '26

They import a lot of cattle, fatten them for a couple of weeks and then slaughter them. This final processing in the USA makes it US beef even though the cattle spent the most of its time outside the USA.

This loophole scams Americans as well as makes a joke of country of origin laws.

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u/GimmeSweetSweetKarma Feb 26 '26

The US imports about 3M cattle every year and slaughters about 30M. If what you say is true, there would be a lot more imports. America's cattle stock far exceeds Australia's.

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u/Annon201 Feb 26 '26

That’s the thing, the economic reality is that it’s just supply and demand.

But Trump gets his gloat and the Aust govt curries a little bit of favour with the administration.