U.S. beef exports totaled 85,066 metric tons in February 2026, down 13 percent from February 2025, with export value falling 10 percent to $722.7 million, per U.S. Meat Export Federation data compiled from USDA release, reported in early April 2026. For the year to that point, combined beef and beef variety meat exports of 177,624 metric tons ran 12 percent below the prior year's pace in volume and 6 percent below in value. The driver is supply: the U.S. cattle herd is at its smallest in decades, and fewer cattle mean fewer beef pounds to export.
This site publishes information, not marketing advice, and nothing here predicts cattle prices. But the export line matters directly at the farm gate, because the cut-out value that foreign buyers add to carcasses has been supporting fed cattle prices through the herd contraction.
Why are exports down while beef demand abroad holds up?
The decline is a supply story, not a demand collapse. Per USMEF commentary released with the February data, tight U.S. beef supplies and high U.S. prices pushed export volumes lower even as several Asian markets outside China kept buying at values that held up better than volumes. Beef variety meat exports were the relative bright spot, continuing to gain ground and reaching record values in early 2026, because those items price far below muscle cuts and stay competitive abroad even when U.S. beef gets expensive.
USDA forecasts reflect the same arithmetic. The USDA Economic Research Service's Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook carried a 2026 beef export forecast near 2.4 billion pounds, below the roughly 2.6 billion estimated for 2025, and a USDA Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN report projected 2026 exports of about 4.15 million metric tons carcass-weight equivalent, roughly 5 percent below 2025's record.
What does this change at the farm gate?
Two things. First, the export market's share of the carcass matters more than its share of headline production. Variety meats, short ribs, and other items that trade heavily to Asia are worth more in export channels than at home, so even a shrinking export volume adds cut-out value that flows into fed cattle and feeder prices. Second, with heifer retention beginning to rebuild the herd, more heifers stay in the breeding herd and domestic beef production tightens further, which supports cattle prices while leaving less product for both domestic and export buyers.
Imports are the mirror image: with U.S. supplies short, lean beef imports from partners like Brazil, which regained fresh beef access to the U.S. market in 2025, per USDA announcements, have risen, and imports reached roughly 17 percent of total U.S. beef supply in the first quarter of 2026, per trade data analyses. That keeps grinding beef available domestically while muscle-cut exports slow.
The near-term reading for operators is straightforward: fewer cattle, record-high cattle prices, and an export channel that is shrinking in volume but still paying for the parts of the carcass domestic shoppers discount. The February numbers are the latest installment of a pattern that will hold until the herd rebuild delivers more cattle, which the biology of the cow makes a multi-year project.
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