Maybe domestic beef is primarily high grade and the bulk of the beef American households consume is cheap ground beef. If so, then we might export the good stuff for profit and import the shit for pennies.

That's just a thought. I don't follow the beef industry.

Dude the ground beef you get at the store is often from like three different continents (read the label if it even has one). We're deep into late stage global capitalism. We aren't farm to tabling shit in this country.

From what I could find from a couple of minutes of searching the US imports slightly more that 50% of it's beef.

So if the price of half of all beef goes up, and not everyone is going to be able to have domestically produced beef, supply doesn't meet demand. so the price will go up, especially if people don't seek out substitutes. It would only go up so much until it gets to the point where the price of imported beef is competitive.

Also remember Trump put tariffs on everything. A rancher needs some parts for some equipment that broke down and it's coming from another country? That's going to cost more. Feed and medicine for the animals may cost more. I don't raise cows so there's probably a bunch of costs that have gone up that I can't think of. Those costs result in it being more expensive to produce beef and that will also increase the price. In fact only reducing tariffs on food importers while still having them on everything else may screw over farmers as they may become unable to compete with farmers in other countries that don't have to pay tariffs on equipment and supplies like US farmers do now.

I don't eat much beef but have seen prices rise along with everything else in the last 5 years but assumed it was just general gouging. Read an article last week that detailed how climate change (damaging crops and yields), increased feed cost and international competition have made many generational beef ranchers selling off stock in the last few years as they can't afford to feed them.