Business
Why America’s ‘Beautiful Beef’ Is a Trade War Sore Point for Europe
Hendrik Dierendonck, a second-generation butcher who has become, as he describes it, “world famous in Belgium” for his curated local beef, thinks Europe’s way of raising cattle results in varied and delicious cuts that European consumers prize.
“They want hormone-free, grass-fed,” Mr. Dierendonck explained recently as he cut steaks at a bloody chopping block in his Michelin-starred restaurant, which backs onto the butchery his father started in the 1970s. “They want to know where it came from.”
Strict European Union food regulations, including a ban on hormones, govern Mr. Dierendonck’s work. And those rules could turn into a trade-war sticking point. The Trump administration argues that American meat, produced without similar regulations, is better — and wants Europe to buy more of it, and other American farm products.
“They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful,” Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said in a televised interview last month. “And theirs is weak.”
Questions of beauty and strength aside, the administration is right about one thing: European policymakers are not keen on allowing more hormone-raised American steaks and burgers into the European Union.
Further opening the European market to American farmers is just one ask on a laundry list of requests from the Trump team. American negotiators also want Europe to buy more American gas and trucks, to change their consumption taxes and to weaken their digital regulations.
Trade officials within the European Union are willing to make many concessions to avert a painful and protracted trade war and to avert higher tariffs. They have offered to drop car tariffs to zero, to buy more gas and to increase military purchases. Negotiators have even suggested they could buy more of certain agricultural products, like soy beans.
But Europeans have their limits, and those include America’s treated T-bones and acid-washed chicken breasts.
“E.U. standards, particularly as they relate to food, health and safety, are sacrosanct — that’s not part of the negotiation, and never will be,” Olof Gill, a spokesman for the European Commission, the E.U. administrative arm, said at a recent news conference. “That’s a red line.”
It is not clear how serious the Americans are about pushing for farm products like beef and chicken. But the topic has surfaced repeatedly. When U.S. officials unveiled a trade deal with Britain on Thursday, for instance, beef was part of the agreement.
But according to Britain, the deal would simply make it cheaper for Americans to export more hormone-free beef to the country and would not weaken British health and safety rules, which are similar to those in the E.U.
When it comes to the European Union, the United States can already export a large amount of hormone-free beef without facing tariffs, so an equivalent deal would do little to help American farmers.
But diplomats and European officials have repeatedly insisted that there is no wiggle room to lower those health and safety standards. And when it comes to meat-related trade restrictions more broadly, there is very little. Chicken, for instance, faces relatively high tariffs, and there is limited appetite to lower those rates.
That’s because Europe is protective of both its food culture and its farms.
Where America tends to have massive agricultural businesses, Europeans have maintained a more robust network of smaller family operations. The 27-nation bloc has about nine million farms, compared with about two million in the United States.
Subsidies and trade restrictions help to keep Europe’s agricultural system intact. The European Union allocates a big chunk of its budget to supporting farmers, and a mix of tariffs and quotas limit competition in sensitive areas. E.U. tariffs on agricultural products are around 11 percent overall, based on World Trade Organization estimates, though they vary hugely by product.
And the bloc could place higher tariffs on U.S. farm goods if trade negotiations fall through. Their list of products that could face retaliatory levies, published Thursday, includes beef and pork, along with many soy products and bourbon.
But it’s not just tariffs limiting European imports of American food. Strict health and safety standards also keep many foreign products off European grocery shelves.
Take beef. Mr. Dierendonck and other European farmers are banned from using growth stimulants, unlike in the United States, where cattle are often raised on large feedlots with the use of hormones. European safety officials have concluded that they cannot rule out health risks for humans from hormone-raised beef.
To Mr. Dierendonck, the rules also fit European preferences. The lack of hormones results in a less homogenous product. “Every terroir has its taste,” he explains, describing the unique “mouth feel” of the West Flemish Red cow he raises on his farm on the Belgian coast.
But farming beef without hormones is more expensive. And American exporters have to adhere to hormone limitations when they send steaks, hamburgers or dairy products to E.U. countries, which European farmers argue is only fair. Otherwise, imports produced using cheaper methods could put European farmers out of business.
“We cannot accept import products that do not meet our production standards,” said Dominique Chargé, a cattle farmer from the west of France who is also president of La Coopération Agricole, a national federation representing French agricultural cooperatives.
The result is that the United States does not sell much beef to Europe. It makes more economic sense for U.S. farmers to sell into markets that allow hormone-raised cattle.
One frequent American complaint is that European health standards are more about preference than actual health.
American scientists have called the risks of hormone use in cows minimal. And though E.U. officials and consumers frequently sneer at America’s “chlorinated chickens,” that rallying cry is a bit dated. American farmers have for years been using a vinegar-like acid, and not chlorine, to rinse poultry and kill potential pathogens.
Some studies in Europe have suggested that such treatments are not a replacement for raising a chicken in a way that makes it pathogen-free from the start. American scientists have concluded that the rinses do their job and are not harmful to humans.
“I don’t know that it’s really about the science,” said Dianna Bourassa, a microbiologist specializing in poultry at Auburn University. “In my microbiological opinion, there are no health implications.”
From the perspective of European farmers, though, whether the health risks are genuine is besides the point. So long as European voters oppose chemical-treated chicken and hormone-treated beef, Europe’s farmers cannot use those farming techniques.
“When you speak to our farmers, it’s about fairness,” explained Pieter Verhelst, a member of the executive board of a Belgian farmers’ union, Boerenbond. “The policy framework we start with is totally different, and those issues are mostly totally out of the hands of farmers.”
And European consumers do seem to support E.U. food and farming rules.
Farmer protests last year loudly opposed more beef imports from South American countries, in part over concerns that the cows might be raised with a growth hormone. An Obama-era trade deal died in part thanks to popular anger over “chlorine chicken” (“Chlorhünchen,” to derisive Germans.)
E.U. public opinion polling has suggested that policies that promote farming and farmers are very popular. In a 2020 poll fielded in-person across the bloc, nearly 90 percent of Europeans agreed with the idea that agricultural imports “should only enter the E.U. if their production has complied with the E.U.’s environmental and animal welfare standards.”
In Europe, including at Mr. Dierendonck’s butchery and farm, there’s a value placed on the old-fashioned, small-scale way of doing things, policymakers and farmers agreed. Mr. Dierendonck does buy some American beef for customers who ask for it — it’s easy to cook, he said — but it’s a small part of the business.
“I like American beef very much, but I don’t like it too much,” said Mr. Dierendonck, explaining that to him, the beef his European suppliers provide is varied, like a fine wine. “For me, it’s about keeping traditions alive.”
In a high-stakes decision that will shape California’s economy for years, air officials late Friday approved a sweeping overhaul of the state’s signature climate program, cap-and-invest.
The 10-3 vote from the California Air Resources Board determines how aggressively the Golden State will curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the years ahead — and how billions of dollars in revenue will flow through communities, businesses and public programs statewide.
Cap-and-invest was nation-leading when it launched in 2013. The program forces major polluters to pay for their share of emissions by buying allowances at auctions or being granted them for free. It uses the revenue to fund public transit projects, wildfire prevention, affordable housing, clean energy, electric vehicles and safe drinking water.
The pollution limit — or cap — declines each year, reducing the total amount of emissions in the state and helping California reach its ambitious climate targets, including 100% carbon neutrality by 2045.
The Legislature voted last year to extend cap-and-invest through 2045. Officials at the Air Resources Board then spent the last several months drafting and revising the plan voted on this week, which received considerable feedback from oil and gas companies, environmental groups, lobbyists and lawmakers all jockeying for different priorities.
Some 200 people testified in person during the marathon two-day meeting preceding the vote, and the final proposal received more than 1,000 written comments.
Industry groups warned that capping emissions too much and too quickly would push refineries out of the state and drive up already soaring energy costs. But environmentalists and other stakeholders said giving too many concessions to fossil fuel interests would defeat the program’s purpose, which is to drive down emissions along a pathway consistent with what scientists say could preserve a recognizable climate.
The program was always planned to become stricter as the years unfolded, to give businesses more time to make the stronger reductions in their emissions.
Officials were under legal, market and budgetary pressure to pass a plan without delay, and also said it’s important for California to signal market certainty.
“It is no secret that climate policy is at a crossroads — under attack by an openly hostile and well-funded opposition and upended by global economic upheaval,” CARB chair Lauren Sanchez said during the meeting. “At a moment of uncertainty at the federal and international levels, California has the opportunity to lead with consistency.”
Among the key updates to the program are the removal of 118 million pollution permits, or allowances, from the market by 2030, and 900 million after 2030. Officials say this will amount to a steep, 11% annual lowering of the cap by the end of this decade, and 7% from 2031 to 2045, in keeping with the state’s mandated targets.
Critically, however, the update will also create a new pool of 118 million allowances above the cap that polluters can apply for and receive if they invest in decarbonization projects, a program dubbed the Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive.
The incentive program is intended to discourage regulated industries from leaving the state. Two major refineries have announced exit plans in recent years, including Valero’s Benecia refinery and Phillips 66’s Los Angeles refinery, which shut down in 2025.
But many critics — including transit, affordable housing, environmental justice and clean water groups — said this amounts to a dismantling of the program.
“CARB has proposed creating exactly 118.3 million additional allowances … outside the cap, the precise number of allowances that must be removed from the cap to keep us on track for our 2030 targets,” said Caroline Jones, a senior analyst with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “This undermines the cap’s role in actually limiting climate pollution, which is the core function of this program.”
The board approved the decarbonization incentive but committed to additional workshops and evaluations of the program before issuing any allowances for it.
Other updates include more free allowances for industrial facilities and refineries, which regulators said will help reduce pressure on gasoline prices. Critics described the free permits as subsidies for oil and gas.
The update will also shift some allowances from gas to electric utilities, and increase funding for the California Climate Credit, a rebate that appears automatically on people’s utility bills.
But perhaps most controversial is how the update will affect the program’s multibillion-dollar revenue, which flows into the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund each year and is distributed to various programs. Cap-and-invest has delivered $35 billion for climate projects in California since its inception.
The new incentive pool will mean the loss of $2 billion annually to the fund, or roughly half the amount it has received in recent years, according to an analysis from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
While the Air Resources Board does not determine how the fund is divvied up — that’s the Legislature — opponents warned that this could amount to significant cuts for the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program, the Low Carbon Transit Operations Program, the SAFER drinking water program and the Community Air Protection Program, among many others that rely on revenue from cap-and-invest.
“This could create serious consequences, including a potential zeroing out of the state’s support for critical emission reduction programs,” said Phillip Fine, executive officer at the Bay Area Air District. “Striking the right balance is critical, but all consequences must be fully considered.”
It was a sentiment echoed by many who delivered comments during the board meeting.
“These additional allowances would not only endanger our emissions targets, they would also flood the auction market and depress cap-and-invest revenues,” said Pam Odell of the group Climate Action California. “These revenues fund vital programs, promote climate resilience, clean transit and transportation, and public health, especially in the most heavily exposed front-line communities.”
Some groups came out in support of the update, however, including Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric. The plan strikes a “balance between program stringency and affordability,” Fariya Ali, air and climate policy manager with PG&E, said during the meeting.
Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), who authored the bill that reauthorized the program last year, was cautiously supportive, noting that she would like to see more guardrails around the incentive program to ensure it aligns with state climate targets. But delaying the update would only create more uncertainty at a time when the Trump administration is already canceling clean energy funds and revoking California’s authority to set clean vehicle standards, she said.
“If we fail now to adopt the proposed amendments to cap-and-invest, it would be without a doubt the greatest victory that the Trump administration could possibly hope for to achieve against California’s climate policies this year,” Irwin said.
Oil and gas groups were tepid. Jodie Muller, chief executive of the Western States Petroleum Assn., said the update provides some near-term relief for refineries, but leaves too much uncertainty after 2030 to drive continued investment.
Brian McDonald, regulatory affairs manager with Marathon Petroleum Corp., said similarly that the oil company is “deeply concerned that the current proposal does not go far enough to provide the regulatory certainty needed to sustain in-state fuel production.”
In a briefing ahead of the vote, California climate economist Danny Cullenward said the update threatens both the “cap” aspect of the program by introducing the new allowance pool, and the “invest” aspect by threatening to reduce the program’s revenues.
The proposal is “being presented as a compromise when in fact it is sacrificing both of the key goals of the program,” he said.
The new plan is slated to go into effect Sept. 1.
Layoffs have continued with another tech company saying it was cutting people to enable it to use more artificial intelligence.
Groupon announced in a security filing this month that it will cut up to 400 jobs, or nearly 25% of its worldwide workforce, as part of a broader restructuring plan to make the platform AI-native. The Chicago company plans to carry out the layoffs in the coming months.
Earlier the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dušan Šenkypl had said the company “fell short of our expectations” last quarter.
Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
The surge in pink slips started in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April this year, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Groupon said in the filing that the decision to shift toward an AI-based company is to “better deliver on our mission, serving both customers and merchants.”
The company said the layoffs will cost it as much as $13 million, but save it more than $20 million per year.
This announcement comes as many e-commerce companies are shifting their business models to AI to reduce costs by automating many roles.
Artificial intelligence has also triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The result is that the class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees are landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work.
The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, while others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired.
Groupon shares, which have fallen 27% over the last 12 months, slipped 1% on Thursday to $21.20.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.
The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.
Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”
In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”
“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
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