Topline
The European Union on Thursday implemented a ban on a Brazilian beef imports because meat from the country isn’t meeting its standards around antibiotic use and food safety, a move that comes three days after the United States began allowing massive amounts of tariff-free beef imports following a closed-door Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Brazilian meat packing billionaire Joesley Batista.
A butcher arranges meat at a butcher shop in Sao Paulo, Brazil on August 5, 2025.
AFP via Getty Images
Key Facts
Trump last week detailed a plan to bolster the American beef supply by waiving tariffs on 300,000 tons of beef imports over three months, a scheme he announced one day after meeting with Batista, who co-owns the world’s largest meatpacking company.
Batista, whose company JBS was the single largest donor to Trump’s inaugural fund through one of its subsidiaries, met with the president in the Oval Office and lobbied him to lift a 26% import duty on Brazilian beef, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The White House has not answered questions about where the tariff-free beef will come from, but the tax relief can apply to any nation categorized by U.S. volume-limit import law as “other countries or areas,” which includes Brazil, Paraguay, Japan, Ireland and other EU countries.
As part of the “other countries” quote, Brazilian beef imports are capped at about 52,000 metric tons per year and Brazil usually hits that cap within weeks of a new year.
After that, any additional beef sent to the U.S. is subject to a massive 26.4% “out-of-quota” tariff and, as a massive beef exporter, Brazil is the primary nation suffering under the tariff and the country that would benefit the most from lifting them.
The meeting between Batista and Trump came after the EU announced it would halt Brazilian meat imports, leaving packers with an immense surplus of export-ready meat and creating an urgent bottleneck that likely motivated JBS and Batista to aggressively lobby Trump for a tariff-free outlet in the U.S.
The suspension of the over-quota tariff rate allows countries to import up to 100,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings per month on a first-come, first-served basis, which uniquely benefits Brazil’s massive slaughterhouses, high export capacity and ready-to-ship product.
WHY DID THE EU STOP IMPORTING BRAZILIAN BEEF?
The EU said in May it would halt Brazilian imports because it wasn’t convinced Brazilian meatpackers were meeting its requirement that antimicrobials not be used for animal growth. The EU was seeking guarantees covering the whole life cycle of animals, an EU spokesperson told Reuters, and Brazil didn’t provide any such guarantees. The EU prohibits giving animals antimicrobials that are used to treat humans, including antibiotics, because overuse of can create resistant bacteria that spread to people through food, contact or the environment, making some human infections harder to treat. The ban on Brazilian beef went into effect Thursday.
SURPRISING FACT
Brazil was EU’s second-largest beef supplier in 2025, behind France.
Key background
JBS USA, Batista’s company, is the largest beef supplier and processor in the United States and the billionaire has positioned himself as a Trump ally in his second term. JBS’s U.S. poultry subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride, donated $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee (more than any other individual contributor) and industry watchdogs noted the donation was part of a broader corporate push by Batista to secure favorable regulatory decisions in Washington. Batista stepped in as intermediary between his country and the U.S. after Trump slapped a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports and called on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to resign, and has since been credited as a major force behind the pair’s reconciliation. Batista later flew to Caracas, Venezuela on a private mission to try to convince dictator Nicolás Maduro to step down after Trump issued an ultimatum, acting as an unofficial White House envoy.
TANGENT
Trump has embraced Batista despite his notorious legal track record. He and his brother Wesley, who jointly control JBS, were arrested in 2017 as part of a large Brazilian bribery probe and reportedly held for six months. They later confessed to bribing over 1,800 Brazilian politicians to build their meat empire and agreed to pay a $3.2 billion fine. During Trump’s first term in 2020, the Department of Justice and the SEC fined JBS and the Batistas millions for foreign bribery violations, with the SEC citing a “profound failure” of corporate governance.
FORBES VALUATION
Joesley and Wesley Batista are among the 1,000 richest people in the world. They’re each worth an estimated $4.4 billion after inheriting the business from their father, who started it with a small butcher shop in central Brazil.
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