U.S. Beef Imports by Country: 2025 Volumes and 2026 Quotas

ERS does not break out the rest-of-world line by country in its monthly Outlook, but its August 2026 issue names the fastest growers within it: Argentina, Paraguay, and Nicaragua. Trade press citing Census data put Argentine shipments at 27,323 metric tons through April 2026, up about 90 percent year over year (see the import tracker). The Congressional Research Service notes that Argentina averaged less than 2 percent of U.S. beef imports from 2018 to 2025. Australia, Canada, and Brazil are the story by volume; Argentina is the story by policy.

Brazil front-loads shipments into January when the pooled quota opens, which is why it leads the half-year table but slipped from March onward once the pool filled and its beef faced the 26.4 percent over-quota duty. Australia, Mexico, and New Zealand kept growing; June 2026 imports from New Zealand were nearly 70 percent higher than June 2025. ERS raised the full-year 2026 forecast to 6.132 billion pounds, 14 percent above 2025, and expects 6.05 billion in 2027.

ERS characterizes U.S. beef imports overall as primarily lean trimmings for ground beef. Country by country, from official descriptions:

Australia and New Zealand ship mostly frozen grass-fed lean trim from cattle that finish on pasture, plus some chilled cuts; both hold large country-specific quotas (Australia also has duty-free access under the 2005 U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement). Brazil ships frozen lean trim and manufacturing beef, almost entirely within the pooled quota or at the over-quota rate. Canada is different: it sends beef from grain-fed cattle in Alberta and Ontario plants, including muscle cuts, and also sends live cattle, roughly 75 percent of them for immediate slaughter (ERS). Mexico sends chilled and frozen beef from TIF-certified plants and, in normal years, more than a million feeder calves; live cattle were suspended from May 11, 2025 until a phased reopening began August 24, 2026. Argentina and Uruguay ship lean trimmings for grinding, which the Congressional Research Service describes as the product moving under Argentina's expanded quota. Neither the United Kingdom nor Japan ships meaningful volume; their quotas exist for trade-agreement reasons.

Beef enters the United States under a tariff-rate quota created in the 1994 Uruguay Round and written into Additional U.S. Note 3 to Chapter 2 of the tariff schedule. Inside the quota the duty is 4.4 cents per kilogram (about $44 per metric ton, per CRS). Outside it the duty is 26.4 percent of value. Country allocations are fixed; the pooled other-countries share is first come, first served and typically fills within weeks of the January opening.

Three details from the bulletin matter for reading the news. The Australia figure of 378,214 tons is the WTO allocation only; Australia's agriculture department reports a combined 2026 entitlement of 449,909 tons once AUSFTA access is added. The other-countries pool shrank from 65,005 to 52,005 tons on January 1, 2026 because USTR moved 13,000 tons into a new UK country-specific quota under the U.S.-UK Economic Prosperity Deal of May 8, 2025. And Canada and Mexico are outside the quota entirely, which is why Mexican beef could grow 30 percent in the first half of 2026 without any policy change.

Argentina, February 2026. A presidential proclamation of February 6, 2026 directed an 80,000 metric ton increase in in-quota access for lean beef trimmings, allocated entirely to Argentina and released in four quarterly tranches of 20,000 tons beginning February 13, 2026 (CBP Quota Bulletin 26-223). That takes Argentina from 20,000 to 100,000 tons for the year. CRS estimates the added volume at less than 5 percent of 2025 imports; Farm Bureau put it at about 1 percent of U.S. consumption. The House passed H.R. 7567 on April 30, 2026 requiring a joint report on the quota's market effects.

Other countries, August 2026. The proclamation Further Ensuring Affordable Beef for the American Consumer, signed August 26, 2026, adds 300,000 metric tons to the pooled quota for lean beef trimmings in three 30-day tranches of 100,000 tons each: September 1 to 30, October 1 to 30, and October 31 to November 30, 2026. It cites a herd at its lowest level in 75 years, a 4 percent production decline, drought and wildfire, and the Mexican cattle restrictions. It also conditions the access on imported trimmings selling at least 25 percent below market rates, with the allocation subject to rescission otherwise. Because it is assigned to the other-countries category, Brazil and Paraguay benefit while Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, which hold their own quotas, do not.

Brazilian beef spent most of 2025 behind three stacked duties: the 26.4 percent over-quota rate once the small pooled quota filled in January, the 10 percent reciprocal tariff applied to most countries from April 2025, and an additional 40 percent duty on Brazilian goods imposed July 30, 2025. Two actions in November 2025 removed the second and third layers. The executive order Modifying the Scope of the Reciprocal Tariff with Respect to Certain Agricultural Products, signed November 14, 2025, took beef (along with coffee, cocoa, bananas, and other staples) out of the reciprocal tariff for entries on or after November 13, 2025. The White House then announced on November 20, 2025 that the additional 40 percent tariff would no longer apply to Brazilian beef, also effective for entries from November 13.

What did not change is the WTO over-quota rate: Brazil still pays 26.4 percent on everything above the 52,005 ton pool, which is why its shipments fell from March 2026 until the August proclamation opened 300,000 tons of in-quota access. USDA's February 2026 Outlook Forum raised its 2026 import forecast specifically because of the November removal of tariff barriers on Brazilian beef.

Food safety of imported beef is FSIS's job: every exporting plant must be in a country whose inspection system FSIS has found equivalent, and product is re-inspected at the port. The rancher objections to Argentine beef are about animal disease, specifically foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which the United States has been free of since 1929 and which APHIS regulates under 9 CFR part 94.

APHIS's position on Argentina has two parts. On August 29, 2014 (effective October 28, 2014) APHIS added the Patagonia region, consisting of Patagonia South and Patagonia North B, to the list of regions free of FMD and rinderpest, noting that Patagonia does not vaccinate. The rest of Argentina controls FMD by vaccination, which APHIS treats as a higher-risk status. In 2015 APHIS issued a final rule allowing fresh chilled or frozen beef from that vaccinating region under mitigation conditions, ending a ban in place since a 2001 outbreak. Argentine trim entering under the 2026 quota is therefore legal and inspected, and the live policy debate, as the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association put it in October 2025, is about the risk of introducing FMD to a U.S. herd that has no immunity. The full timeline is on the import tracker.

For a shopper, the country table converts to one rule: imported beef is in the ground beef, not the steak case. Australian, Brazilian, New Zealand, and Argentine trim is blended with domestic fat trim at U.S. grinding plants and sold under the grinder's establishment number, usually without an origin statement. Since January 1, 2026 the Product of USA claim is reserved for animals born, raised, slaughtered, and processed here, so its presence is meaningful and its absence is ambiguous (Product of USA label). Canadian and Mexican muscle cuts carry a country-of-origin mark under customs rules.

If origin matters to you, the purchase that removes the question is a share of a named animal from a named farm, processed at a plant you can look up in the processor registry. Start at how to buy a half cow and check what it costs in 2026 at how much a half cow costs.