Remarks transcript, Sep 4, 2026 (Donald Trump)

Well, thank you very much, everybody. This is a very important meeting with a great group of people, farmers and ranchers mostly.

And today I'm thrilled to announce that my administration has taken historic action to help our nation's great cattle ranchers and deliver American meat process to the highest standard in any—there will be no standard higher in the world—and sold at the lowest prices directly to the consumer.

Ranchers and farmers have always been a number-one priority to me. I was—they like me, and I like them. Based on the results of the election, they like me a lot, and I like them a lot. They work hard, they're smart, they're efficient, and they are very clean people. They're immaculately clean. That's what we're talking about.

But, for years, I've heard that they have a problem with the big processors. You have basically four massive companies that process the food, and they have to bring it to these processors, and it's a monopoly, I would say. So I've heard all about it. I've been listening to it—the big processors.

And they say they're a very nasty group, very difficult to deal with, and they cost our farmers a lot of money, and they cost our ranchers a lot of money, and they cost the public a lot of money and grief. And we're not going to let it happen any longer.

So this is something that nobody thought was ever going to be done. And I often have asked—over the last few weeks, I decided to do this—"Why didn't other Presidents do it?" And people just said they just didn't do it. But I always hear it's one of the biggest problems that the ranchers have and farmers have.

So, for the first time ever, we're going to give farmers and ranchers the right to process their own food. That's a big announcement. That's a big announcement.

We're creating a program where small- and medium-sized and large ranchers can sell their products directly to consumers so that they don't have to go through the big four processors and middlemen. Oh, they're not going to be happy when they hear this. I don't know who they are, but they're going to be coming at me at different angles. Will you people please protect me? [ Laughter ] I'm going to need protection from my NFL guy over there.

I've got you. [ Laughter ]

But it's true: They're going to be very upset about this because they had a—they make a lot of money.

We're streamlining all health and safety regulations to make it easy and safe. The cattle ranchers and the farmers—you know, they run great operations, clean operations, but then they have to go through hell. And we're going to have very strong safety inspections, as you can imagine.

But we're going to have them process their own food. If they want, they can go through the other places if they still exist. I don't know if they're going to exist any longer, frankly. But people have been asking for this change for decades, and we're getting it done.

This is the largest ever government effort to change all federal rules and regulations necessary to support our ranchers and our farmers.

And I want to thank Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and all of the people that we work with, including Zippy Duvall, who's been a friend of mine for a long time. Zippy, right?

I've got your back, Mr. President.

Did you ever think you'd do—see the processing thing done, Zippy?

Yes, sir.

Huh?

Yes, sir.

I especially want to thank the farmers and ranchers who feed our Nation from the Great Plains of Texas and South Dakota to the farms and cattle country of California, Arizona, Ohio, a lot of other areas.

Under the last administration, American agriculture was decimated by crippling inflation and radical-left environmental regulations. They wouldn't let our farmers, our ranchers breathe. Tens of thousands of farms and ranches went bankrupt. They went out of business. Their kids were—were devastated. The families were devastated under Biden, and they did badly under Obama too.

Our cattle herd fell to 86 million, the lowest level in 75 years. We're building it up now, but it fell all the way down to 86 million—way, way below what it was during my administration.

At the same time, the livestock industry has been ripped off by a meatpacking monopoly—which we're probably taking care of, I think, pretty well today—driving down what ranchers earned. They were charging them numbers that were unsustainable.

And '23—'19—if you take a look at it, the worst farm year in the history of our country, they're saying, where they lost $90 billion, was in 2023. And it was, they say—what do I know?—a year like no other.

Was that a tough time, right? A tough time.

But under the Trump administration, all of that is changing. We cut crop insurance premiums by more $400 million. We eliminated the death tax on—where you die, you leave your farm to your children, you don't have a tax to pay——

Yes, sir.

——saving 2 million family farms.

You feel good about that, right?

Yes, sir.

You want to leave them to your kids?

Thank you.

If you like your kids, you leave it. If you don't like them, then you don't care about what I just did. [ Laughter ] But we have it in the big bill. How big is that, right? No—

Huge.

Huge.

No estate tax for the kids, right?

My four kids would love the opportunity to pass it on.

Good. Well, now they don't have to go borrow a lot of money and then go bankrupt—right?—and—and lead a miserable life. They have no more estate tax to pay.

So—and it's my honor. That was a terrible thing, especially for the farmers because, you know, sort of land rich and cash poor. You have that beautiful land. You want to keep it, but that's—not necessarily the cash to go along with it. You don't have to worry about it.

So you're saving millions and millions—and billions, frankly—of dollars.

We reduced the drought threshold by half so that ranchers can get Federal support sooner. We cut taxes on the average farm household by $2,300 and, in some cases, many thousands of dollars more than that—7-, 8-, 9,000 dollars.

And my administration's negotiated more than 20 trade deals, opening up tens of billions of dollars in new market access for our farmers. We're getting tremendous trade deals done. And in some cases, they're doing them because we used the threat of the possibility of tariffs, or the ultimate threat, the really big threat, is we're not going to do business with you anymore if you don't take care of our farmers. We have that right. We won that right.

We had that right always, but it was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court's decision on tariffs, which was an unfortunate decision. But the positive was maybe better than—maybe better than tariffs is, if a country treats us badly, we have absolutely no obligation to do any trade with them at all. So, as part of those negotiations, if we want to even negotiate, we take care of our farmers.

In addition to the order to allow farmers to process their own food, I'm also signing an order authorizing ranchers to protect rural communities and cattle herds from predatory Mexican gray wolves, which are costing them tens of millions of dollars and endangering not only herds but people.

So the Mexican gray wolf. Anybody have a problem with the Mexican gray wolf?

Here. A big problem.

How? Where—where are you from?

Arizona, sir.

And is that a very fertile area for the gray wolf?

That's where they've released a lot of the Mexican gray wolves: Arizona and New Mexico, sir.

Who released them?

It was during the Bill Clinton administration. Mr. Babbitt was secretary of the Interior, and he oversaw that.

Not a great idea, right?

No, sir. No.

Although, they are beautiful looking.

Right.

But you don't think they're beautiful, do you?

Well——

And what do they do, rip your herds apart?

They will kill your livestock. They will kill your dogs, your horses.

What about a person?

It has happened in the history, yes. It——

If they want to, they will. But they tend to leave them alone, right?

My great-grandmother had an incident, but that was over a hundred years ago, before they——

But they do kill pets and things like that?

Yes, sir. Dogs, especially.

And they're very violent?

Yes, sir.

And, sir, the problem is, because they're on the endangered species list, they can't shoot them. They have to sit and watch them destroy their herd and their cattle.

But you can shoot them as of today?

Well, we're—yes, that is—[ laughter ]—Secretary Burgum has to do a little magic.

Well, you have to be able——

But yes. Close. We're close.

No, they're destroying these businesses.

That's right.

And nobody's allowed you—you watch them, they go right through your herd, and you're not allowed—and they're violent, right?

That's right.

They're—it's a violent situation.

Yes, sir.

It costs people millions and millions of dollars.

And you'd be fine, if you were able, but you're not allowed to protect yourself, right?

No. Nope.

Or your company or your cattle—your nothing?

Nope.

So how do you like the idea that I'm letting you do that?

I'm—[ inaudible ].

And that will totally solve the problem, right? [ Laughter ]

Well——

No, I mean you're going to have them, but you'll be able to protect your herd.

Yeah.

And right now, you cannot do anything?

That's right.

Not in a lot of places.

Or it's illegal, right?

Right.

It's incredible.

So where are you from?

Washington state.

And how bad is the problem up there?

Well, it is really bad. We've been——

So which area is the worst? So Arizona, Washington, which is——

I'm not so sure about the—in our area, it's the Canadian gray wolf, and I don't know if—I think it's the—all the same—same one. So——

So let's give it back to Canada. [ Laughter ]

Exactly.

Oh, we'd love—we would love it.

You know, we've seen it take hundreds of family ranches and just—they're just gone. And it——

And they would be able to protect if they had the right to shoot them?

In our——

But they're not—the Canadian wolf, they're not allowed to shoot that either?

Nope. Nope. In our region, we are federally delisted. And the State of Washington has fought us tooth and nail and won't allow your guys' team to come in and won't allow us to do anything, and——

So they're allowing your herds to be gobbled up, actually, by these——

Encouraged.

And what's the level of danger for people—danger, if you—if you're aggressive, I guess, is what I hear, right?

In our area, there was one girl that was out in a logging area, and she was marking trees. And those—the wolves came in on her, and they put her up in a tree and held her there until somebody else got there with a vehicle and chased them off. So it's a—it's becoming an immense public safety concern, and——

And it's getting worse?

Our sheriffs are all on board, and our State politicians.

Okay. You're allowed to go and——

No.

——take care of it now.

No, no, now.

Now.

All right. [ Laughter ] If you say so, sir.

You're allowed. We have no choice. I mean, you know, look, we have no choice. I've been hearing about it for a long time, and you have no choice.

Just like the processing. It's ridiculous that you're not allowed to keep you—you'll do it cleaner than these four monopolies, two of which are based in Brazil.

Mm-hmm.

That's right.

So it's, like, ridiculous.

So this order also will require country-of-origin labeling across all foreign beef. So what we're doing: The farmers are processing their food, and I'm signing an order authorizing ranchers to protect rural communities and cattle herds from the predatory Mexican gray wolves and others, which are costing them billions of dollars over the years—billions of dollars—ruining their herds and ruining their businesses.

I mean, do you—do a lot of people go out of business because of this? They will knock you out of business, right?

Yes, it can affect them. Even if they're not being attacked, it affects breed-back rate. It stresses the cattle out.

But in our blue States, in California and Oregon and Washington, they're still listed. So, the states—

This list?

Yes, sir. So the West Coast States have been very unfriendly to ranchers for a long time, and we so appreciate what this administration has done to draw attention to it. But those States are hardest.

Well, we're trying to supersede, like, California and some of the other States——

We appreciate that.

Well, one——

——where they have a—you know, so we want to supersede them. All right?

One thing, Mr. President——

Yes.

——is there's the States are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars every year for wolf management, and they're going through the State agencies, the State WDFW, and the—and we're funding our own demise. They're using the money they get from you to put us ranchers out of business.

So do you think we should stop it?

I think you should.

So you mean if we stopped paying for wolf management, you're going to—do they actually have something called "wolf management"?

They—it is a—wolf numbers are encouraged under wolf management with—through the State. They're—it's encouraged to put ranchers out of business and encourage wolf populations and decimate the game herds in our beautiful State of Washington. And all that money that our State is getting from you is funding our demise for our game herds, our cattle ranchers, and everything else. It's all just going—the wolves are running—running rampant.

Okay, so let's terminate it.

Thank you.

Take it out. It's ridiculous.

I mean, we've got to take care of it ourselves.

Hey, that's—[ inaudible ].

You'll maintain it yourself.