DOJ Shuttered Antitrust Probe of Meatpackers Before Trump’s ‘Performative’ Investigation Demand
"The law is clear," said one advocacy group, "what's been missing is the political will to use it."
The US Department of Justice shuttered an antitrust probe into the heavily consolidated meatpacking industry shortly before President Donald Trump announced that he had asked the department to investigate whether companies are unlawfully colluding to push up beef prices.
Bloomberg reported late last week that Trump administration officials "formally notified companies recently that they were closing a probe into sharp price increases" during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The probe began during Trump's first term and continued through the Biden administration, which used executive action to target price gouging in the meatpacking industry.
The Trump Justice Department's decision to close the antitrust investigation came weeks before Trump, in a post on his social media platform, said earlier this month that he had instructed the DOJ to "immediately begin an investigation" into meatpacking companies. Just four corporations—Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef—control roughly 80% of the beef market in the United States.
Critics viewed the president's announcement as a performative move intended to deflect criticism of his failure to take substantive action to bring down beef prices. Trump has falsely claimed that the prices of all grocery products are down except for beef.
The advocacy group Food & Water Watch noted that Trump's call for a price-fixing probe came just three months after the Republican president "rescinded a Biden administration executive order meant to tackle these exact meatpacker abuses."
"Farmers and consumers need real action to bring down prices and protect producers—not performative announcements," said Tarah Heinzen. "If Trump is serious about investigating beef packers, his [US Department of Agriculture] must also vigorously defend the prior administration’s Packers and Stockyards Act rules."
Farm Action, a watchdog that fights corporate abuses in the agriculture sector, said that DOJ probes of the kind ordered by Trump often "end quietly" without any meaningful action.
"For this one to matter, it must end with enforcement," the group said last week. "If investigators uncover anticompetitive behavior, the DOJ has powerful tools to act. Under the Sherman Antitrust Act, it can take the packers to court, break them up, prosecute executives, force changes that protect farmers, and prevent further consolidation."
"The law is clear," Farm Action added, "what's been missing is the political will to use it."
