(CAPITOL CITY NOW) – If you are excited about the 90-day suspension of beef tariffs, Illinois Beef Association executive Josh St. Peters says – slow your roll.

“We’ve seen our market for live cattle reduced by as much as $500 per head, which is all of the profit margin and then some for those Illinois family farmers,” St. Peters says. “Meanwhile, the price of that pound of ground beef at the grocery store really hasn’t softened, and the economists who track the meat sector are forecasting that we shouldn’t anticipate seeing that softening in the near term; frankly, because the corporate entities that are behind the processing of the beef that then sets the price at the grocery store.”

As far as what President Trump has said, St. Peters chooses his words carefully. “He said he was going to lift the tariffs to reduce the price of groceries for consumers. He was going to lift the tariffs so that the price of beef would go down for consumers,” said St. Peters. “If it takes lifting tariffs to lower the cost of things, what does that say for the last eighteen months of all the tariffs that have been put on all of the agriculture inputs that have put a strain on our farm economy?”