bAnnas covers the rancher’s mouths and noses and protects them from heavy dust clouds kicked by a herd of Mexican cows across the US-Mexican border. The scene looks timeless and routine. Uncertainty is not.
In Donald Trump’s first 100 days, the cattle industry in the border area faces major challenges. It is a threat from a trade war that has already hit consumers with rising beef prices from Texas to New York. The repeated tariff imposition and concerns in February and March caused Mexican cattle producers to increase economic losses.
“Taxes, that’s a game killer,” said Daniel Manzanares, director of the Chihuahua Regional Livestock Union, the Chihuahua Regional Livestock Union.
According to Manzanares, the unpredictability of the US president’s tariff policy on Mexico earlier this year has already cost ranchers millions of dollars in profit loss.
“It was horrifying…” he said. “They are trying to get that money back, but I don’t think they can.”
Recently, most of the 1,300 cows moved north that day and fattened with feed pens before finally converting them into steaks, burgers and meatballs for consumers. But it could end soon.
Free Trade Agreements protect about half of all goods coming to the US, including beef, from Mexico. But for many in the industry, the uncertainty surrounding federal US policies has surprised ranchers.
“We’re committed to providing a range of services to our customers,” said Alex Durante, senior economist at the DC-based ThinkTank Tax Foundation. The Trump administration “behaviors so irregular that it is generally very difficult for businesses to invest in this environment.”
Union Ganadella ranchers say that importing cattle from Mexico’s vast Chihuahua border border state remains important to the US livestock economy, particularly with the US beef shortage and the highest beef price ever.
The costs of maintaining one of the most important industries in the country are already becoming unstable. Parasitic screwworm outbreaks, catastrophic droughts, and shortages in personnel at US ports of entry have already plagued the system.
Trump’s trade policy continues to evolve, but his administration’s decades of breaking with America’s free trade policy threatens to unleash a long-established system of cross-border trade embedded in the northern path, the name of El Paso del Norte.
Confusion at the border
The Mexico’s tariff turmoil in early February and March gave us a glimpse into the potential collapse of the US Mexican free trade.
On February 1, Trump announced a 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico. In February alone, tariff horrors (along with the previous pest outbreak) caused a $3 million loss to ranchers, said Alvaro Bustillos, president of Vaquero Trading in Santa Teresa.
These same tariffs were suspended in March before reviving on April 2nd for the “liberation date.” A week after Trump’s April announcement, tariffs on Mexican goods were once again suspended, further increasing the unpredictability of US economic policies.
Marco Herrera, a US customs broker with the private agency Capin-vyborny, and his team, issue import documents and are responsible for the buyers and sellers to comply with customs regulations. The Trump administration’s tariff announcement in February sent panic through the border industry and stopped the cattle crossing.
After Trump announced the tariffs, customs brokers, buyers and sellers were not ready to implement them with just 48 hours of notice, Herrera said. He drove suddenly back from California to New Mexico for 10 hours after hearing about it on social media. He said the White House did not share formal guidance in advance on which products will be affected.
“Sellers and buyers didn’t understand who was liable to pay the duties,” Herrera said. “The buyer told the seller, ‘You’re responsible.’ The seller told the buyer, “You’re responsible.” At US customs, the person in charge is the buyer.
As US consumers slowly begin to feel the cost, the first casualty is Mexican cattle ranchers. The $600 million industry is the third largest economy pillar in the Chihuahua. Crossing the border, New Mexico processes almost a third of all cattle imported from Mexico each year.
Over 90% of the cattle producers in the Unión Ganadera Regional De Chihuahua are small ranchers who have around 10-15 cows per year.
Meat prices in the US have been steadily rising over the years. US sirloin steak prices have risen to nearly $12 per pound in March 2025, from just over $10 per pound in March 2023. During the same period, beef prices rose from nearly $5 per pound to nearly 1 pound.
The threat of tariffs on Mexico is wary of ranchers who fear losing money when sending cattle across borders, despite the protection of some of the specific goods under the US Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), including livestock. The USMCA, implemented during the first Trump administration in 2020, replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Manzanares said many ranchers have already “cancelled the border crossing day.” He said hundreds of dollars were lost per animal after the tariffs were enacted. “It’s an overt stolen,” he said, referring to tariffs.
Trump is pushing for high import taxes as his solution to boost American industry and protecting American jobs. The move would instead directly hurt farm workers and US consumers, Herrera said.
“The 25% tariff means that Mexican producers don’t want to do business through US immigration ports,” Herrera said in the February tariff disruption. “Instead of making money, we’re losing money… we’re losing jobs. There aren’t enough cows for all US customs brokers, buyers and shipping companies.”
Amidst these growing fears, Trump issued a pause in February and March. After a 30-day reprieve in March, he announced on April 2nd an additional 10% baseline tariff on all goods imported into the country, as well as mutual tariffs on countries with a trade surplus with the United States. Mutual tariffs remain suspended for 90 days, but a 10% tax still exists.
Environmental crisis
Tariffs are just the latest setback for border ranchers. Even before the trade war, prolonged droughts, rising inflation and the outbreak of screw worm parasites disrupted much of the cattle industry along the US-Mexican border.
Bustillo calls it the “most complicated era” that the Chihuahua cattle industry has ever faced.
Northern Mexico has been suffering from drought since late 2022, affecting 76% of the country. It is approximately 98 million people. The resulting feed reduction has forced many ranchers to buy more feed, increasing the cost of maintaining herds of cattle. This reduced the herd of producers. Many of them are already small ranchers.
The outbreak of parasitic fly plague, known as the “New World Screwworm,” exacerbated the rancher’s light-like form.
Screwworms are separated from the meat of living mammals. This parasite, usually found in Central America, headed to Mexico in late 2024 despite efforts by local authorities to contain it. Cross-border trade between the US and Mexico was completely closed between November and December due to the outbreak.
As a result, Mexican cattle ranchers have implemented more hygiene measures and continued to bring cattle north to meet the new USDA requirements. Currently, all USDA testing must be completed in Mexican soils. This means only five of the original 12 ports currently active.
Moreover, according to Herrera, mass shootings at USDA by Elon Musk, by the so-called “Doctor of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), have been accompanied by an indefinite hiring freeze of professional inspectors and technicians, keeping the closed door to cattle crossings. This includes one in an adjacent border town in Columbus, New Mexico, due to a lack of people to perform the test.
At the remaining ports, like in Santa Teresa, Bastilos, a Baquero deal, said inspection bottlenecks continue.
“All these (Mexican) states want to go through our intersections and we just have limited ability to acquire (flocks),” Bustillos said. “We currently work at 50% capacity.”
With months of border closures and cattle inspections tightened, further hurdles like tariffs have threatened to exacerbate already severe losses.
“We have the door to the best market in the world. We pay the best insurance premiums,” Bustillos said. “I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world that has steak and beef prices like the US. (US) brings a lot of value to the industry.”
That open door to the world’s best beef market may not remain open for too long.
“It’s truly embarrassing to see what’s going on,” Manzanares added.
This story was produced for Puente News Collaborative in collaboration with Craig Newmark School of Journalism (CUNY) at City University of New York.))