President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed 25% tariff on all products entering the United States from Canada and Mexico should be concerning for anyone in the meat business, says Len Steiner, and it comes down to three key points.

“One is demand for meat in the United States remains good. I mean, the American public likes to eat meat, period. And growth in U.S. meat production has stalled recently. Much of the growth in the last several decades has been driven by increasing population, increased meat exports and increase in per capita consumption of meats,” says the founder and principal of Steiner Consulting Group. “At some point in time, the American public's stomach is just going to be full. And when that happens, either you got to reduce the supply or else prices are going to collapse.”

During a recent webinar hosted by the Meat Institute, Steiner said he expects beef production to be down about 3% in 2025; followed by a 4.3% decrease in 2026. Pork should be relatively unchanged next year, while broiler production should increase 1.6% and turkey will be slightly down by 0.4%.

As for per capita consumption based on carcass weight for beef, pork and poultry, Steiner predicts 2024 to finish with an all-time record high of 281.7 pounds. The last milestone for the industry was in 2022 with 278.3 pounds per person.

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Although the American public has been consuming around 65 pounds of pork per person per year for decades, Steiner believes there is opportunity for the boneless pork loin to gain market share over chicken breasts and ground beef.

Pork market

Steiner notes that while pork production has not been as consistently up as much as broiler production, it has grown over time and the pork industry has essentially followed the broiler industry on their production processes.

“Today we have near record number of pigs coming to market, and we have probably 15% of the hog producers that we had in 1980,” Steiner says.

Steiner credits the industry for generating more pigs per litter, as the current 11.5 pigs per litter is a big number compared to production stats coming from Europe and parts of China.

The top import market for U.S. pork continues to be Canada, with 61% in volume and shares coming from up north January through October of this year.

“They have their Thanksgiving a little earlier than we do, so they take their hams and some other products earlier than we do, and then they ship hams down here for the Christmas season,” Steiner says. “It's a two-way trade, but Canada's a big deal.”

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While the U.S. does not get much pork in from Mexico, Steiner notes our neighbor to the south is a “big kahuna for pork exports,” accounting for around 40% of U.S. pork exports.

“We get in a trade war with Mexico, and they raise tariffs to slow down some of that flow,” Steiner says. “It's going to be a problem for the pork industry, especially for anything in the ham industry.”

No mouths to feed

Steiner says the meat industry should also be concerned about Trump’s proposed immigration policy, not only from a labor standpoint, but the loss of consumers as well.

“We're likely to lose some workers and that's going to be a problem for production, but we're also going to lose some mouths to feed,” Steiner says. “If they don't consume it, then we end up with more product and somebody's got to consume it or the price comes down.”