President Donald Trump is claiming to have struck a deal to flood the U.S. market with as much as 300,000 tons of beef imported from abroad and sold under price controls in a bid to lower prices ahead of the November midterm elections.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he’d “concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families” and falsely alleged that beef prices had “soared” under the previous Biden administration “at their fastest rate” and blamed Biden for reductions in ranchers’ cattle herds to “the smallest size in modern history.”

“As we work to rebuild this herd and help our ranchers, for the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out of quota tariff. We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices,” Trump said.

He added that the agreement would “reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a query from The Independent about who Trump had purportedly been negotiating with, nor did they respond to questions about the source of the imported beef, the identity of the person or persons who’d committed to impose a price control on the imported beef.

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