STEVE FORBES: Chuck Schumer has a beef with beef, but doesn’t even know how to grill it
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has never worked a cattle ranch. He has never run a meatpacking plant. And after America saw his backyard grilling stunt, it is fair to ask whether he knows how to properly grill a cheeseburger.
Yet as Americans prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s independence this July 4th — in the heart of summer grilling season — Schumer wants Washington to muscle its way into the U.S. beef industry.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Plenty.
Schumer’s so-called "Family Grocer and Farmer Relief Act" is classic Washington liberalism: find a real problem, misdiagnose the cause, prescribe a cure that makes things worse and call it "relief." We have seen this in healthcare, energy, housing and education. Politicians create or worsen a crisis, blame private enterprise and then use the pain as an excuse to expand government control.
Beef prices are high. Families feel it every time they go to the grocery store. But the cause is not a cartoon conspiracy by meatpackers. It is basic economics: strong demand and tight supply.
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Retail beef demand rose sharply from 2019 to 2025, while America’s cattle herd fell to its lowest level in 75 years. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, total U.S. cattle and calves stood at just 86.2 million head as of Jan. 1, 2026. That is down sharply from Jan. 1, 2019, when the inventory stood at 94.8 million head, a drop of roughly 9% in seven years. The 2025 calf crop was a record-low 32.9 million head, the second consecutive year a new record low was set.
That is not price gouging. That is supply and demand.
For years, drought battered major cattle-producing states. Ranchers faced soaring feed, energy, land, labor and regulatory costs. Inflationary Biden-era policies — backed by Schumer and his allies — made everything more expensive for farmers, processors and consumers alike.
Now Schumer wants to punish the very supply chain families depend on.
Cattle are not widgets. Congress cannot pass a bill and produce more beef. Chickens can be raised for market in weeks. Beef cattle take years. From the birth of a heifer to the point where her offspring can ultimately enter beef production, the process can take roughly three years. That long cycle depends on weather, feed, financing, land, labor, trade policy and confidence that government will not suddenly change the rules midstream.
No Senate press conference can speed up biology.
The facts on meatpacking also demolish the Democratic price-gouging narrative. Beef packer margins in 2025 averaged a loss of roughly $138 per head. Tyson Foods reported an operating loss of more than $1 billion in its beef division that year. These are not the numbers of monopolists pocketing windfall profits. They are the numbers of a capital-intensive industry squeezed by the tightest cattle supply in more than three generations.
But Schumer’s bill ignores all that. It also ignores the damage done by years of anti-business policies imposed by the same politicians now pretending to be champions of consumers.
Instead of lowering costs, reducing regulatory barriers, encouraging investment, expanding processing capacity and keeping trade channels open, Schumer wants Washington to politically restructure the beef industry in the middle of a supply crunch.
That is economic malpractice.
Breaking up companies may make for good populist sound bites, but it is rarely clean, quick or cheap. In meat processing, forced restructuring would mean duplicated infrastructure, higher financing costs, stalled investment, litigation and uncertainty across the supply chain. The likely result: fewer efficiencies, less capacity, more risk and higher prices at the meat counter.
Wealthy shoppers buying prime cuts from boutique butchers may barely notice. Working families buying ground beef for burgers, tacos, meatloaf and weeknight dinners will.
There is a better way. Washington should reduce the cost pressures that made beef more expensive in the first place. Ease unnecessary regulatory burdens on farmers, ranchers and processors. Lower energy and transportation costs. Keep import and export markets open during changing supply cycles. Reduce tariff and input-cost pressures that make herd rebuilding slower and more expensive.
Most of all, let markets work.
And let us not forget who is pushing this scheme. Schumer’s allies include the Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wing of politics — the same crowd that has spent years demonizing beef, lecturing Americans about what they eat, and flirting with Green New Deal ideas that would make food, fuel and electricity more expensive.
One day they tell us to eat less beef to save the planet. The next day they pretend to be shocked that beef is more expensive.
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America’s beef market will recover, but not if Washington turns a supply problem into a government-control problem. Herds can be rebuilt. Investment can return. Prices can ease. But that requires stability, lower costs and confidence — not politicians threatening to remake an entire industry for a campaign talking point.
As America marks 250 years of independence, we should remember what made this country prosperous: private enterprise, property rights, limited government and free markets.
Chuck Schumer may not know how to grill a cheeseburger. But he should know enough not to burn down the beef industry.