Fox News screenshot from 11/9/25 describing Beef Inflation over a chyron about Trump calling to investigate meatpackers

From the November 9, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Weekend

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Fox News figures called price gouging investigations “communist.” Network figures are now praising Trump for proposing the same thing for meatpackers.

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

Multiple Fox hosts are joining President Donald Trump in blaming large meatpacking corporations for soaring beef prices, supporting his call for an investigation into the companies for price gouging even though the network dismissed former Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris’ call to address these concerns by empowering investigations into price gouging as “communist,” “Soviet-style price control,” and “old school socialism.”

Additionally, Fox is supportive of Trump’s tariff and mass deportation policies that are contributing to higher beef prices.

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  • Fox hosts support Trump calling for investigating of meatpacking companies over “price manipulation” amid soaring beef prices

    • Trump: “I have asked the DOJ to immediately begin an investigation into the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation.” In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “We will always protect our American Ranchers, and they are being blamed for what is being done by Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers, who artificially inflate prices, and jeopardize the security of our Nation’s food supply. Action must be taken immediately to protect Consumers, combat Illegal Monopolies, and ensure these Corporations are not criminally profiting at the expense of the American People. I am asking the DOJ to act expeditiously.” [Truth Social, 11/7/25]
    • Fox Business host Dagen McDowell: “This is a huge problem in terms of the costs that are passed on to the American people by the oligopoly of meatpackers.” Her guest, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), effusively thanked Trump for his announcement. [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 11/7/25]
    • Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Griff Jenkins: “The president has a point. There are four meatpackers that dominate 85% of the beef market, and that’s why he’s leaning into it.” Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy added: “Clearly, there might be a monopoly situation there, and that's why the DOJ and the Agriculture Department are looking into this.” Co-host Charles Hurt said that these four meatpacking corporations “have gotten in trouble in the past and been pursued in the past for price rigging among themselves, which is obviously illegal. And that's what President Trump wants his Department of Justice to look into.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 11/8/25]
    • Fox & Friends Weekend later asked Trump Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to “address what the president’s talking about — possible collusion or monopolies among the meatpackers.” During the interview, Rollins claimed that Trump’s announcement was about affordability and suggested that “we’ve got a national security issue on our hands” because of the meatpacking industry consolidation, adding: “If you can’t feed yourself, you’re not secure as a nation.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 11/8/25]
    • On The Big Weekend Show, Fox host Tomi Lahren interviewed a Republican senator about a question “that’s very close to my heart as a South Dakotan,” asking about Trump directing the DOJ “to start investigating meatpackers over high prices and accusations of collision, price-fixing, and price manipulation.” During the interview, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) claimed Trump’s “entire goal was is to lower the price on our consumers’ table.” [Fox News, The Big Weekend Show, 11/8/25]
    • Fox & Friends Weekend also interviewed a cattle rancher about Trump’s announcement, and he said meatpacking corporations “can manipulate that market pretty easily.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 11/9/25]

  • Fox derided the idea of investigating price gouging as “communist” “price controls” when it was proposed by VP Kamala Harris

    • In August 2024, the Harris campaign detailed her plan to “advance the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries,” citing the need for “independent meat processors to compete with the handful dominating the industry.” A press release on the proposal also stated that the regulatory and legal authority to investigate and enforce the new anti-price gouging rules would rest with “the FTC and state attorneys general.” [Harris-Walz campaign press release, 8/16/24 via Popular Information; Twitter/X, 8/15/24]
    • Fox host Sean Hannity warned against Harris “go[ing] the route of weaponizing the DOJ to go after food companies” while displaying a graphic that showed her with the caption: “The best I can do is communism.” Hannity also compared Harris’ plan to the Soviet Union. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/15/24]
    • Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy: Harris’ “plan apparently involves a Soviet-style price control to stop inflation” and “blam[ing] corporate greed.” Campos-Duffy then aired video of Trump criticizing Harris’ plan, in which he said: “Kamala is reportedly proposing communist price controls. … If they worked, I’d go along with it too. But they don’t work, they actually have the exact opposite impact and effect.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/15/24]
    • Fox contributor Jason Chaffetz: Harris’ plan to ban corporate price gouging in the food industry “is what the communists would do, what socialists would do.” Chaffetz continued: “And that is the government’s going to come in and solve this. The government is going to dictate what prices are going to be. Is there anything more scary to the entrepreneurs in the business community than the government controlling your prices? Her solution for inflation and fixing the economy is for the government to take over? I don't think this is going to fly. I don't think it's going to come over very well. It’s never worked. That's not who we are as a country.” [Fox News, America Reports, 8/15/24]
    • Then-Fox contributor and Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy decried Harris’ “set of commie policies”: “When she’s talking about price-gouging, the real policy prescription for that is price-fixing. They want to go old school socialism, fix prices.” Fox Business host Dagen McDowell said, “You will have bare shelves, so ‘Make America the Soviet Union’ should be the slogan there.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/15/24]
    • After a Democratic senator defended Harris’ policy by citing “consolidation, say, of the meatpacking industry where you only have four industries in the country,” Fox anchor John Roberts responded: “There are a lot of economists … who say this idea of price controls is just a silly idea.” [Fox News, America Reports, 8/21/24]

  • Trump policies supported by Fox are also contributing to higher beef prices

    • Former director of economics at Yale’s Budget Lab Ernie Tedeschi: “The effective tariff rate on imported beef has risen from 4.2% in July 2024, and 2.3% as recently as January, to 10.7% this past July.” He added: “(There's more than tariffs going on with beef prices, e.g. droughts, but tariffs are an upward factor).” [Twitter/X, 10/17/25]
    • Director of Arkansas Center for Research in Economics Jeremy Horpedahl: “There are a number of factors driving beef prices higher, some of which are outside Trump's control (e.g., droughts). But one thing that is under his control? Tariffs. Such as the 76.4% tariff on Brazilian beef.” [Twitter/X, 10/16/25]
    • Fox has defended Trump’s tariffs and dismissed their contribution to increased prices. As economists this summer explained how Trump’s tariffs were beginning to show up in inflation data, Fox Business hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jackie DeAngelis, along with guest Art Laffer, denied any tariff impact on prices. Meanwhile, inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index re-accelerated following Trump’s Fox-endorsed “Liberation Day” tariffs first announced in April. [Media Matters, 7/15/25, 8/12/25, 4/1/25; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 11/5/25; CBS News, 4/9/25]
    • Trump’s Labor Department says his mass deportation policies have resulted in “significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers.” Additionally, an opinion piece from Phil Kafarakis, CEO of the Food Away from Home Association stated: “The U.S. livestock and meat sectors are staring down a labor crisis. As federal immigration officials prepare to deport more than one million undocumented workers, meatpackers, dairies, poultry processors and cattle operations are bracing for severe workforce disruption. The impact will not be theoretical. It will show up on the line, in the barn and on the shelf.” He added: “The numbers speak for themselves. According to USDA data, undocumented laborers make up 42% of the total U.S. farm workforce. In meat and poultry processing, estimates run as high as 50% of frontline staff. That translates to as many as 270,000 workers who currently handle everything from live animal intake to cutting, trimming, packing and sanitation. Lose those workers and output slows immediately. Some facilities may shut down entirely, causing scarcity and likely increasing prices consumers will have to pay.” [The American Prospect, 10/8/25; The Beef Site, 9/16/25]
    • The Trump administration has launched raids at meatpacking plants to arrest immigrant workers and revoked legal protections that resulted in hundreds of meatpacking workers losing their jobs. These have included a June raid at a meat producer facility in Nebraska that left only 30% of its staff on the job, more than 200 workers at a JBS facility in Iowa losing their jobs due to their immigration protections being terminated, and hundreds more who lost their meatpacking jobs in an Illinois city for the same reason. [Reuters, 6/12/25; NBC News, 7/30/25; Investigate Midwest, 9/3/25]
    • Fox has also embraced Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Trump administration “border czar” Tom Homan has, as of early August, appeared nearly 100 times on Fox News and Fox Business this year, including softball interviews that glossed over the inhumane aspect of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies and segments that supported the administration’s framing of immigrants as violent, a framing that is quite false. [Media Matters, 8/7/25, 8/8/25]