IN a reflection of the dramatic changes being seen in the United States beef market this year, Brazil has managed to fill its entire 2025 tariff-free access volume to the US market in just 17 days.

US Customs and Border Protection has reported that the 2025 “Other Country” quota under which Brazil trades beef with the US was filled last Friday, 17 January.

Unlike Australia, which enjoys a massive 448,000t tariff-free quota with the US negotiated under the 2005 US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, Brazil supplies the US market under the tiny 65,000t ‘Other Country’ quota, along with a collection of other smaller exporters.

The filling of the ‘Other Country’ quota last Friday means that Brazilian beef entering the US is exposed to an out-of-quota tariff of 26.4 percent on all beef shipments for the remainder of 2025 – more than 11 months. That additional tariff burden reduces the competitiveness of Brazilian beef against other exporters like Australia and New Zealand.

Other South American exporting countries like Argentina and Uruguay operate under their own country-specific US beef quotas, but volumes are tiny, at just 20,000t/year.

Last year, Brazil filled its 2024 quota by late March. The year before that, the trigger level was reached in May – but this year the quota level has been reached in record time.

That is partly because Brazilian exporters shipped large volumes into bonded storage in the US in December last year, in anticipation of the tariff burden being relieved from January 1. It’s that ‘flood’ of beef that has led to the quota being filled in record time this year, meat traders told Beef Central.

But has the early avalanche of Brazilian beef impacted pricing prospects for Australian beef and trimmings in the US?

“Hardly,” one trade observer said. “The market was well aware of the likelihood of the sudden surge in Brazilian meat in January, and factored that into pricing for Australian product,” he said. “And certainly, not all US beef customers using imported trimmings are prepared to buy Brazilian product – McDonald’s is a good example.”

For reference, Australian lean trimmings used for hamburger beef in the US was trading at US300c/lb last week. That was exceeded only by a brief period in 2022 when imported trimmings went to US306c/kg briefly, due to COVID impacts on US meat processing operations. In Aussie currency terms, sales of 90CL cow trimmings are now approaching A1060c/kg, a record high, aided by a currency value around US62c in early stages this year.

That US price record looks like being broken in coming months.

For the week ended 9 January, USDA estimated US cow/bull slaughter at 113,000 head, down 15pc from the same week a year ago and 40pc lower than two years ago.