US-based research firm CattleFax delivered bad news for consumers at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s annual conference in Nashville this week, warning that high prices for steak and ground beef are here to stay.

CattleFax analyst Kevin Good told the audience that beef supplies will stay very tight. He said the beef cow herd will shrink again this year, pushing slaughter and production to the lowest point of the current cattle cycle.

Bloomberg data shows the total US cattle herd size nears a 75-year low.

In return, tight supplies have sent ground beef prices at the supermarket to record highs – a massive pain point for consumers.

Good said beef cow inventory is expected to decline by about 285,000 head in 2026, with growth of 400k and 500k head in 2027 and 2028, respectively.

The analyst said calf crops – total number of calves born in a given year – should match 2025 levels, signaling another year of tight supplies. He said there won’t be meaningful expansion until 2027, adding that steer and heifer slaughter is forecasted to drop by roughly 600,000 head next year.  

Good noted that beef cow shortages have been offset by slaughterhouses’ increasing reliance on beef-on-dairy cross calves, which now account for about 20% of slaughter animals.

He said restrictions on Mexican cattle imports are expected to further constrain feedyard placements through the first half of 2026.

Since the last peak of the inventory cycle in 2019, the US has had a herd reduction greater than the current beef cow inventory of Texas. A handful of Great Plains states have lost a full 20% of their beef cow herd. pic.twitter.com/kphZDBOuzX

— Garth Gatson (@GarthGatson) January 31, 2026

In recent months, the Trump administration has announced a framework for a trade deal with Argentina to boost beef exports. This would be a temporary fix that would add supply to the US cattle herd, an attempt to lower prices in the short run while the administration works to curb sticky food inflation, which has lingered mostly from the Biden-Harris era.

Ranchers have sounded the alarm on Trump’s move to quadruple beef import quotas of Argentine beef in his attempt to lower grocery store beef prices.

“A deal of this magnitude with Argentina would undercut the very foundation of our cattle industry,” Justin Tupper, a South Dakota cattle producer and president of the United States Cattlemen’s Association, recently told Reuters.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently told Fox Business, “There is frustration on both sides. And I was with the president yesterday and he is very, very frustrated because (of) everything he’s done to cut taxes, to bring down costs.”

Our biggest takeaway is that food inflation is very sticky, and we’ve told readers for years to create a self-sufficient backyard (start with this).

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times,

U.S. President Donald Trump signed a law this week extending a free-trade agreement for some African nations until the end of the year, Washington’s chief trade negotiator said.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said his department would work alongside Congress this year to update the program to align with Trump’s America First policy by expanding market access for U.S. businesses, farmers, and ranchers.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), established under President Bill Clinton in 2000 to provide duty-free access to the U.S. market for eligible sub-Saharan African countries for thousands of products, expired in September, jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of African jobs.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation in January to extend the law for three years, but the Senate later limited the extension to one year, which the House concurred with. The agreement has also been backdated until last September, when it expired.

Diplomatic Tensions

Renewal of the trade program comes amid fears around the imposition of tariffs and strained relations between the United States and South Africa, the largest economy on the African continent and the main beneficiary of the AGOA.

Trump has accused the South African government of forming political, economic, and military alliances with Washington’s adversaries, including Iran, Russia, and communist China.

Trump last year condemned Pretoria for opposing Israel and accusing the U.S. ally in the Middle East of genocide in the Gaza Strip in a case lodged before the U.N. International Court of Justice.

The U.S. president has also accused the South African government of carrying out a genocide against white South Africans, particularly white farmers, and in March last year, offered asylum to “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety.”

Trump last year boycotted the G20 major economies hosted by South Africa, which held the rotating presidency. In November, Trump said South Africa would not be invited to G20 meetings hosted this year by the United States, which assumed the group’s presidency in December.

U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

‘Certainty and Predictability’

South African Trade Minister Parks Tau last month welcomed the passing of the extension by Congress, which he said would “provide certainty and predictability for African and American businesses that rely on the program.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it would work with relevant agencies to implement any modifications made to the government’s Harmonized Tariff Schedule as a result of the legislation reauthorizing the agreement with the African nations.

To qualify for duty-free treatment, the African countries must establish or make progress toward establishing a market-based economy, political pluralism, the rule of law, and the right to due process. As of 2025, 32 African countries were listed as eligible.

Countries that want to remain eligible must also eliminate barriers to U.S. trade and investment, enact policies aimed at reducing poverty, combat corruption, and safeguard human rights.

The East African country of Uganda was removed in 2024 for enacting a strict anti-gay law that the Biden administration labeled a human rights violation.

The agreement allows around 1,800 products to be exported to the United States duty-free, including crude oil, cars and car parts, clothes, textiles, and agricultural produce, driving much of the trade between the United States and Africa, valued at more than $100 billion in 2024 by the U.S. Trade Representative.

Since the introduction of the program, the South African economy has benefited to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in export products—including critical minerals, gemstones, motor vehicles, and fresh produce—to the United States without having to pay taxes.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer delivers opening remarks during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Ministers’ Meeting and U.S. trade representative consultation, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Sept. 24, 2025. Reuters/Hasnoor Hussain/File Photo

Cuts to Aid

One of Trump’s first executive orders suspended $440 million in annual aid to South Africa, saying that policies implemented by the socialist government discriminate against the country’s white Afrikaner minority.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to Trump, saying that his administration “will not be bullied” and that it will continue to set its own domestic and foreign policies and “choose its own friends.”

U.S. ties with Africa’s second-largest economy, Nigeria, have been strained after Trump raised concerns about the persecution of Christians in the country.

Following the dismantling of the USAID program after the Department of Government Efficiency uncovered widespread waste and fraud, the United States has moved to renegotiate assistance methods for African countries, including a series of bilateral health agreements announced in recent months. 

The pledges of assistance require African nations to invest in their own health care systems, which the Trump administration says should improve self-sufficiency and cut waste.

Finland has prided itself as a global leader in decarbonization, boasting the second-highest share of renewables in final energy consumption across the EU. But the green utopia narrative has cracked under the strain of a brutal winter, as cold weather has brought wind power generation to a near standstill.

Most of the country’s wind capacity is concentrated in western Finland, where temperatures are well below freezing, and these adverse weather conditions have led to dangerous ice buildup on turbine blades. According to Bloomberg, this forced the grid operator Fingrid Oyj to curtail wind power output.

“There are low fog clouds in Finland’s main wind power production area, roughly at the height of turbine blades, which are causing new ice to form,” Pia Isolähteenmäki, an adviser at industry consultant Kjeller Vindteknikk Oy, told the outlet.

Much of Finland’s wind fleet lacks blade-heating systems for extreme cold weather. How is that even possible, considering it’s a Nordic country? Even the thinnest ice buildup risks equipment damage and has led to shutdowns this week.

Bloomberg data show that Finnish wind output is expected to remain very low for the next two weeks. Meteorologists at MetDesk forecast that Nordic wind generation will remain as much as 20% below normal through at least the midpoint of the month.

The result of the green utopia pushed by Europe’s climate alarmists, not based in reality whatsoever, is soaring power prices that are crushing working poor households.

“Electricity prices in Finland rise to the highest level of the winter on Monday, driven by severe cold, weak wind conditions and rising weekday demand,” local outlet Helsinki Times wrote on Sunday.

Finnish folks on X are questioning the government’s questionable decarbonization push:

Our electricity bill was 45 EUR yesterday alone.

Finland: nuclear power, hydroelectric, wind farms, one of the most technically advanced countries in the world.

Also Finland: people burning firewood because the electricity market is fucked. I am sitting next to the fireplace…

— Mari Luukkainen (@mariluukkainen) February 4, 2026

🇫🇮 News from the “green garden”. In Finland, the blades of wind turbines froze

The electricity production of wind power stations in Finland fell from 9433 MW to about 430 MW. Thus, they produced no less than 5% of the nominal power.

The culprit turned out to be Russian frosts,… pic.twitter.com/DNXNUM5Rs7

— dana (@dana916) January 30, 2026

Finland literally has to use nuclear power to MELT frozen wind turbines and we live in darkness most of the year. How about focusing on reliable power like nuclear instead?

— Zeaqi (@zeaqit) February 4, 2026

renewables? reliable? lmao

Here in Finland we have record high electricity price spikes because it’s winter so solar isn’t working and our wind turbines froze 😀

no form of energy generation is reliable unless it’s output is also reliable and not reliant on random weather

— valtteri459🌽 (@valtteri459) February 4, 2026

In the US, a historic cold snap in the eastern half of the country led to increased fossil-fuel power generation to prevent power grid collapse.

Across the West, years of grid mismanagement by climate alarmist policymakers have transformed what were once reliable grids into fragile messes where working poor households bear the brunt of some of the highest electricity costs in the world.

It is time to get back to basics and expand natural gas generators and nuclear power, the only proven large-scale source of clean and reliable electricity. And it is also time to hold accountable the climate alarmists whose policy decisions pushed power grids toward the edge of collapse while promising a green utopia that was never going to arrive. And one can only wonder whether the move to push power grids to the brink of collapse was intentional…

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

One of the most annoying things about climate doomsayers is the certainty with which they make their dire predictions, while simultaneously making excuses for all their past prognostications that failed to materialize. Let’s revisit a few.

In the early to mid-1970s, several magazine articles and a number of scientists predicted that cooling trends could usher in a new “mini-ice age” beginning within a few short years. Didn’t happen. In fact, new crystal balls went from cold to hot.

A June 1989 Associated Press story quoted “a senior U.N. environmental official” who claimed that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, insisted that “governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.” Without action “ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.”

At last report, the Maldives continue to thrive – thanks largely to growing tourism! According to CBS News, in 2009 former Vice President Al Gore (always good for a chuckle) “told a U.N. climate conference that new data suggests the Arctic polar ice cap may disappear in the summertime as soon as five to seven years from now,” meaning 2016 at the latest. Didn’t happen.

In 2000, the UK Independent ran an article quoting a scientist who suggested that within a decade, thanks to global warming, British children “won’t know what snow is.” Don’t tell that to the British youngsters and others who experienced the severe winters of 2010, 2013, 2018, etc.

Enough? Let’s do a couple more.

There were numerous predictions in the early 2000s that all glaciers in Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 or, if we were lucky, by 2030.

“Later predictions delayed the glaciers’ inevitable demise to 2050,” according to a December 2025 article in the Daily Inter Lake. “Now, researchers say there is reason to believe some of the park’s perennial ice formations will persist into the 2100s.” Glaciers are famously stubborn. Several news stories over the years have quoted scientists and climate alarmists predicting that New York City would disappear under water thanks to flooding due to climate change.

For instance, in 2011, on the heels of Hurricane Irene, The Guardian produced the headline, “Major storms could submerge New York City in next decade,” and a subhead, “Sea-level rise due to climate change could cripple the city in Irene-like storm scenarios, new climate report claims.”

Instead, the only tsunami facing New York City is the flood of debt coming under socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Despite a track record that should discourage even the most ardent true believer, the predictions keep flying, fast and furious, most centered these days around slightly rising temperatures that will allegedly increase rainfall, create more wicked storms, and lead to drought, flood (they always cover both possibilities) or other catastrophes.

“Climate change is real, it’s happening and unless we do something about it soon, the consequences will be severe,” according to Martin Krause, director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Climate Change Division. Second verse, same as the first.

While most believers in manmade climate change are part of the “Let’s Come Up With the Worst Case Scenario and Hope it Scares Everyone Into Action” school of alarmism, it’s refreshing to occasionally come across someone with a more reasonable approach.

Fitting that bill might be Noah Kaufman, former senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration, currently a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a co-director of the Resilient Energy Economies Initiative.

In a “let’s all calm down a minute” article appearing earlier this month in The Atlantic, Kaufman – while making it clear that he personally is firmly aboard the manmade climate change bandwagon – laments the specific time-and-date panic predictions that have helped lose respect and credibility for his cause.

“Few economists embrace these all-or-nothing views on climate policy,” Kaufman writes. Kaufman points out that “quantitative estimates of aggregated global damages over centuries lie far beyond our analytical capabilities. Small changes in assumptions … can yield results that appear tojustify virtually any policy response.”

At the end of the day, “these models can display a pessimistic worldview in which climate damages accelerate to catastrophic levels, or a more optimistic one in which human progress keeps damages relatively modest. They offer little help in determining which of these futures is coming.”

Kaufman concludes by acknowledging that “the full effects of climate change are unknowable, and a more constructive public discussion about climate policy will require getting more comfortable with that.”

I recommend Kaufman’s article. Even though I will likely remain among those who agree that the climate routinely changes but remain skeptical about the extent of mankind’s impact, I don’t mind discussing it and listening to different viewpoints. Such conversation is much more palatable with someone who is not exhibiting a holier-than-thou attitude or demeaning the intelligence of anyone who disagrees.

More manmade climate change believers who take a respectful, calmer and non-accusatoryapproach to the naysayers could go a long way in lowering the temperature – and don’t we all agree on that objective?

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing
columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.