In bad news for protein-hungry Americans, beef is more expensive than ever

Meat-packing giants, meanwhile, are benefiting from beefier prices.

10/6/25 10:01AM

One of the billionaire owners of the world’s largest meat company thinks that the US isn’t producing enough beef to satisfy Americans’ increasingly protein-rich diets. He’s probably not wrong.

“The US is facing the highest beef price in history, and so the US needs to import more and more because production is not there to support the demand,” said Wesley Batista, one of the brothers behind Brazilian meat giant JBS.

While the US has long been a net exporter of beef, imports to the country are now reaching new heights as the nation tries to resolve its domestic beef supply issues, which largely stem from underinvestment in America’s cattle herd a decade ago. Even with President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in place, the US was importing 30% more beef in the first half of the year than in 2024, as it looked to contain soaring beef prices.

Beef prices are increasing chart — Sherwood News

The growing use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs might also be driving US beef demand. “No one knows exactly what is the impact of these new drugs, Ozempic or Mounjaro... but something is happening because protein overall became [a trend],” Batista said last month.

A lot at steak

America’s beef landscape is dominated by four big companies, which produced 81% of the nation’s beef in 2021, per a USDA report last year. And with supply tight and demand growing, beef in the US keeps getting pricier — which is making meat-packers, not least JBS, fatter.

The São Paulo-based company made almost $2 billion in profit last year, bouncing back after a loss the year before, and has continued to see a 61% year-on-year uptick in net income in the latest quarter.

Now, JBS is looking to cement its status as the top beef producer in the US, where its wider meat and food business accounted for half its revenue in 2024. With prices increasing and the fact that the business produces most of the beef for its US market on American soil, that may very likely continue to tick up in quarters to come.

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Blackstone and Invitation Homes are some of the largest owners of private homes in the country. Homebuilders including PulteGroup, DR Horton, and Lennar also stumbled on the news.

Nationwide, institutional investors own a small share — less than 1%, according to the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute — of US single family homes, which has led some to argue that they have had a relatively small impact on housing prices. But their concentration in particular markets, such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Charlotte, has prompted others, like center-left think tank Third Way, to argue that their purchases can have an effect on specific markets, neighborhoods, or certain types of houses.

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One potential driver of the move might be optimism surrounding the company’s unveiling of a new line of processors at the Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday.

Another possible candidate was the reflected glow of a deal announcement from Mobileye, the autonomous driving company that Intel holds a significant stake in.

Mobileye initially rose after buying Mentee — an artificial intelligence robotics company — for $900 million in cash and stock in a deal that’s expected to close this quarter.

(Intel spun off Mobileye in 2022, but retained a controlling stake in the company.)

Finally, news that Qualcomm is perhaps looking to use contractors outside Taiwan for its next-generation chip — though it’s reportedly speaking to Korea’s Samsung for that, not Intel — may be raising hopes that chipmakers looking to diversify away from Taiwan could become customers for Intel’s troubled contract chipmaking division.

But again, there’s no clear reason to point to for its outperformance on Wednesday.

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(Intel spun off Mobileye in 2022, but retained a controlling stake in the company.)

But again, there’s no clear reason to point to for its outperformance on Wednesday.

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