00:00One of the positive signs that we saw going into these talks was that on Thursday, China had renewed import
00:05licenses for hundreds of U.S. beef plants.
00:08China had allowed those licenses to lapse last year in response to Trump's trade war.
00:14So I'm wondering what that could mean for beef prices that American consumers are going to see at the store.
00:20Well, this is an interesting one because in tandem with this, there's an actually a beef shortage in the United
00:27States right now.
00:28And it's become a political issue in a lot of places.
00:32The price of ground beef, I checked this last week, a pound of ground beef now costs almost $7 in
00:39the United States.
00:40And this just is part of the basket of everyday sort of mainstay staple items that Americans are paying for
00:48that they're paying a lot more for than they used to.
00:51So you couple that with China is now going to buy more U.S. beef.
00:57You would think, and I'm an old commodities reporter, I sort of know how supply and demand works, especially with
01:04China.
01:05When China starts buying more of something, the supply of it goes, it gets tighter and the price goes up.
01:11So it's an interesting one on its surface.
01:14It looks like a market opening for the U.S., but the consumer impact may actually backfire in this particular
01:21case with beef.
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