Ground beef prices edged higher in August, signaling little progress in the Trump administration’s offensive against record costs with only two months left until midterm elections. Ground beef prices averaged $7.158 a pound in August, rising 0.6% from the prior month to a new all-time high, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. Prices were 7.9% above year-ago levels as a small US cattle herd continues to put pressure on supplies, though the pace of gains has slowed. Steak prices, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, dropped 1.9%.

Stubbornly high prices for the protein have been a key driver of broader food inflation, becoming a target of the Trump administration. Shoppers earlier this summer began showing signs of resistance to elevated costs, leading to flat volume sales even during the typically busy July Fourth holiday. The president in August doubled down on efforts to address the situation, saying he would allow up to 300,000 tons of ground beef imports under lower tariff rates within the next 90 days, with most of that supply likely to come from Brazil. The US Agriculture Department also late last month reopened an Arizona port to Mexican live cattle, resuming a trade that had been largely halted for over a year to prevent the spread of the deadly New World screwworm. The port reopening has brought in more than 2,500 feeder cattle, according to a USDA report. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said that two more New Mexico ports will reopen in phases.

Higher imports are deflationary — Chicago live cattle futures touched their lowest intraday levels since November 2025 late last month — but won’t make a “huge difference” for consumers, said Darin Parker, president of meat distributor PMI Foods. “I see this as just a structural issue because we have a low herd. All of these things the administration are trying to do — I think they’re trying to do the right thing, I think they’re trying to lower prices,” Parker said. But “they did not cause the problem, and I don’t know that they can really fix the problem.”

Trump last fall already encouraged more shipments from Argentina, and the USDA — even before the latest announcement — estimated that imports would make up a record 19% of US supplies this year. That still hasn’t been enough offset the impact of a dwindling cattle herd, which was at its smallest in over five decades as of July 1, according to a biannual USDA report. The administration, following backlash from American ranchers over Trump’s import plans, announced programs to help domestic supplies rebuild. Meanwhile, stubbornly high prices have drawn antitrust scrutiny to a highly concentrated meatpacking industry, and the Justice Department recently expanded an ongoing probe to include retailers including Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. But processors, who blend those so-called lean trimmings with fattier American cattle to yield the right lean-fat ratios for ground products like hamburger patties, are still losing money in their beef segments and have closed facilities. Tyson Foods Inc., the country’s largest meatpacker, issued a surprise cut to its annual outlook last week, marking the second such reduction within a month. The company had already been paying higher prices for animals without being able to pass those costs onto its customers, and the latest drop in the US cattle market lowered the value of the live animals it had bought six months prior, incoming Chief Executive Officer Jeff Schomburger said at the Barclays Global Consumer Financial Conference on Thursday.