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Bandanas veiled ranchers’ mouths and noses, shielding them from heavy dust clouds kicked up by the Mexican herds of cattle crossing the United States-Mexico border. The scene looks timeless, routine. The uncertainty isn’t.
In Donald Trump’s first 100 days, the borderland’s cattle industry faces a huge challenge: threats of a trade war that’s already hitting consumers in the gut with rising beef prices, from Texas to New York. The on-again, off-again tariff impositions and worries in February and March jolted Mexican cattle producers with mounting economic losses.
“The tariffs, it’s a game-killer,” said Daniel Manzanares, director of Union Ganadera Regional de Chihuahua, the Regional Livestock Union of Chihuahua.
The unpredictability of the US president’s tariff policy on Mexico earlier this year has already cost ranchers millions of dollars in profit losses, according to Manzanares.
“It was horrible …” he said. “They’re trying to get that money back, but I doubt they’ll ever be able to.”
Recently, most of the 1,300 cattle moved north that day for fattening in feed pens before final transformation into steak, burgers and meatballs for US consumers. But that could soon end.
Free trade agreements protect around half of all goods coming from Mexico into the US, including beef. But for many in the industry, the uncertainty surrounding federal US policies has ranchers spooked.
“It doesn’t really matter at this point in terms of what the exemptions even are,” said Alex Durante, senior economist at the DC-based thinktank Tax Foundation. The Trump administration “has been behaving so erratically that it’s in general very difficult for businesses to invest in this environment”.
Cattle imports from Mexico’s sprawling border state of Chihuahua remain crucial to the US livestock economy, especially with a US beef shortage and the highest ever beef prices, say ranchers from Union Ganadera.
The cost of maintaining one of the nation’s most vital industries had already become precarious. A parasitic screwworm outbreak, a devastating drought and personnel shortages at US ports of entry already plagued the system.
While Trump’s trade policy continues to evolve, his administration’s break with decades of American free trade policy threatens to unravel a long-established system of cross-border trade that’s embedded in the very name of El Paso del Norte – the Pass of the North.
Chaos at the border
The tariff chaos in Mexico in early February and March provided a glimpse into the potential collapse of US-Mexico free trade.
On 1 February, Trump announced a 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico. During February alone, the tariff scare (along with a preceding pest outbreak) caused $3m in losses for ranchers, said Alvaro Bustillos, president of Vaquero Trading in Santa Teresa.
Those same tariffs were paused in March before being reinstated on 2 April for “liberation day”. One week after Trump’s April announcement, tariffs on Mexican goods were paused once again, further adding to the unpredictability of US economic policy.
Marco Herrera, a US customs broker with private agency Capin-Vyborny, and his team are responsible for issuing documents for imports and ensuring buyers and sellers comply with tariff regulations. The Trump administration’s tariff announcement in February sent panic through border industries and stalled cattle crossings.
After Trump announced the tariffs, customs brokers, buyers and sellers were unprepared to implement them with only 48 hours’ notice, Herrera said. He abruptly drove 10 hours back from California to New Mexico after first hearing about it on social media. He said the White House did not share formal guidance as to what products would be affected in advance.
“The sellers and buyers didn’t understand who was responsible for paying the tariffs,” Herrera said. “The buyer was telling the seller, ‘You’re responsible.’ The seller was telling the buyer, ‘You’re responsible.’ Under US customs law, the responsible party is the buyer. The consumer in the US is who will absorb the costs.”
As US consumers slowly begin to feel the costs, the first victims are cattle ranchers in Mexico. The $600m-plus industry is the third-largest economic pillar in Chihuahua. Across the border, New Mexico processes nearly a third of all cattle imported from Mexico annually.
More than 90% of cattle producers with the Union Ganadera Regional de Chihuahua are small ranchers who have about 10 to 15 cattle available for the entire year.
Meat prices in the US have been steadily increasing over the years. Data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows prices for sirloin steak in the US increased from a little over $10 a pound in March 2023 to nearly $12 a pound in March 2025. During that same time period, ground beef prices rose from almost $5 a pound to almost $6 a pound.
The threat of tariffs against Mexico has alarmed some ranchers who fear losing money if they send cattle across the border, despite some protections for certain goods under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), including livestock. Implemented in 2020 during the first Trump administration, the USMCA replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).
Manzanares said many ranchers have already “canceled their border crossing date”, because they “didn’t want to take a chance of having $500 a head taken away”. He said hundreds of dollars were lost per cattle after tariffs went into effect. “It’s a damn outright steal,” he said referring to the tariffs.
Trump is pushing high import taxes as his solution to boosting US industries and protecting US jobs. The move, Herrera said, will instead end up directly hurting agricultural workers and US consumers.
“With 25% tariffs, Mexican producers are no longer going to want to do business through US ports of entry,” said Herrera on the tariff chaos in February. “Instead of making money, we’re losing money … We’re going to lose our jobs. There’s not going to be enough cattle for all the US customs brokers, the buyers, the transportation companies.”
Amid these growing fears, in February and March, Trump issued pauses. Following March’s 30-day reprieve, he announced on 2 April an additional 10% baseline tariff on all goods imported into the country, as well as reciprocal tariffs on countries with trade surpluses with the US. The reciprocal tariffs remain paused for 90 days, but the 10% tax still stands.
An environmental crisis
Tariffs are just the latest setback for border ranchers. Even before the trade war, a prolonged drought, rising inflation and a screwworm parasite outbreak disrupted much of the cattle industry along the US-Mexico border.
Bustillo calls it “the most complicated times” the Chihuahua cattle industry has ever faced.
The northern part of Mexico has had a drought since late 2022, affecting 76% of the country – roughly 98 million people. The resulting diminished forage is forcing many ranchers to purchase more feed, raising the costs of maintaining their herds of cattle. This has shrunk the producers’ herds, many of whom are already smaller ranchers.
The outbreak of a parasitic fly pest known as the “New World screwworm’’ exacerbated the ranchers’ plight.
The screwworm lives off the flesh of living mammals. Usually found in Central America, the parasite made its way to Mexico in late 2024, despite efforts by the local authorities to contain it. The cattle cross-border trade between the US and Mexico was completely shut down between November and December due to the outbreak.
As a result, Mexican cattle ranchers implemented more sanitary measures to meet new USDA requirements to continue bringing their cattle north. All USDA inspections must now be completed on Mexican soil, which means only five of the original 12 ports are active at this time.
Additionally, according to Herrera, mass firings at USDA by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), accompanied by an indefinite hiring freeze of specialized inspectors and technicians, have kept ports of entry shuttered to cattle crossings. This includes one in the neighboring border town of Columbus, New Mexico, due to a lack of personnel to perform the inspections.
At remaining ports, like the one in Santa Teresa, Bustillos of Vaquero Trading, said inspection bottlenecks continue.
“All these [Mexican] states want to come through our crossing ports and we only have limited capacity to get [the herds] across,” Bustillos said. “We’re working at 50% capacity now.”
With months of border closures and tightened cattle inspections, any further hurdles, like tariffs, threaten to compound already stark losses.
“We have the door to the best market in the world, one that pays the highest premiums,” Bustillos said. “I don’t think there’s a place in the whole world that has the prices of steaks or beef like the United States has. [The US] brings a lot of value to the industry.”
That open door to the world’s best beef market may not remain open much longer.
“It’s a downright shame what’s happening,” Manzanares added.“Our best friends are Canada to the North, Mexico to the South. It does not bode well for us on a global level for trade.”
This story was produced for Puente News Collaborative in partnership with the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York (Cuny)
