What’s your beef? A comment on beef trade dynamics

Teenagers growing up in English Canada in the 1990s are likely to fondly remember Street Cents, a newsmagazine TV series directed at adolescents that aired on CBC on weekday afternoons. The show – which won several Gemini Awards – was aimed at promoting consumer and media awareness for young people and featured several reoccurring segments to achieve their aims. One of these segments was called ‘What’s your beef?’, where viewers could submit complaints – or ‘beefs’ – about products or services to be investigated by the Street Cents team.

Were the show to still exist today, it’s likely modern viewers would be submitting their beefs about beef itself. Last month, CTV national news ran a story entitled What’s behind the high price of Canadian beef? Amongst other things, the story cites statistics about the fall in U.S. beef imports and the rise of non-American beef imports. The impetus behind CTV’s story appears to be driven by recent developments in the U.S. where President Trump announced plans to quadruple the volume of low-tariff Argentinian beef imports, ruffling U.S. ranchers’ feathers in the process. The policy change, Trump claims, aims to lower retail prices for U.S. consumers who are – like Canadian consumers – seeing eye-watering retail beef prices that only continue to increase.

Let’s take a closer look at Canadian beef trade dynamics.

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