Op-Ed by Joe Goggins, Billings, MT
There is nothing worse than hearing your name drug through the mud when you and others have poured countless hours into meaningful efforts to uplift our industry and try to create a better situation for our children and grandchildren. But sometimes silence—at the cost of ego in the name of letting those with influence do important work on behalf of us all—is worthwhile. While I have been silent and let the disgusting and false criticisms of myself, my friends, organizations I love, and an initiative I’m immensely proud of, slide from the lips of the uninformed and off my shoulders, things have indeed played out.
Our President has finally demonstrated a better understanding of the rancher’s role in protein production, and I think brighter days are ahead for our great American cattle industry. Even so, those who scream for relevance and attention do so at the sacrifice of the fellowship and community that our great way of life is built on. They’re still clinging to the last dregs of controversy that have been stirred up over the last few weeks and it is finally time for me to share my perspectives on what has occurred and put some nonsense to bed.
But first, a bit of background might be helpful. A few years ago, when cattle prices were crumbling under the weight of the COVID pandemic and the outlook for young people getting into or staying in farming and ranching was at its bleakest, important conversations were being held. At that point, I was already part of volunteer leadership of the Livestock Marketing Association, and we commissioned several listening sessions of producers all over the country to hear their troubles as well as their ideas.
At the end of the day, if we don’t have producers raising cattle, we have no cattle to sell at auctions and so the producer’s plight is very much the marketer’s concern. We talked to people who proudly wore their membership affiliations to producer groups, breed associations, and others who had no affiliation at all. In the end, a chorus of 2,000 cattlewomen and cattlemen had spoken and said they wanted to work together to find some real solutions to real problems and the Common Ground Summit was born.
In April 2025, LMA invited 40 industry thinkers from all walks of life to gather in Denver, Colorado, to meet at the Common Ground Summit. Again, some attendees came with strong affiliations to various other organizations, some came with no affiliations at all. Young, old, established, and just getting started, it was a diverse gathering of respectful and forward-looking livestock industry participants who wanted to come together to find “common ground.”
If I’m being honest, I had low hopes for such a diverse group of people to land on anything they could agree on. Some of us joked that just getting them all to agree peacefully on what time to take a lunch break would be a win. I was shocked and emboldened with optimism like never before when that group of people aligned on FIVE points of mutual agreement to help the longevity of livestock producers in the country: ag-friendly tax reform, improvements to risk management tools, flexibilities for livestock haulers, improvements to access to labor, and strengthening young and emerging farmer and rancher programs.
At the end of our time at the Common Ground Summit, the feedback was strong: this could not be the end of the conversation, but rather just the beginning. Since that iconic meeting, we’ve had over 10,000 individuals from all 50 states sign onto the Common Ground Coalition in support of those five points of agreement. Some of the points of agreement have already crossed the finish line of success through the hard work and years of advocacy of individuals and organizations across the industry, which has been so encouraging. The Common Ground Coalition got attention across multiple platforms and found its way to the desks of those who care about our industry in Washington, D.C.
In July, the idea was proposed by Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) to invite the founding Common Ground Coalition members to a meeting in D.C. in October. Senator Sheehy was joined by Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) in their desire to help the good word of the Common Ground Coalition reach the ears of other Senators and members of the House of Representatives. On Tuesday, October 21, 2025, despite the government shutdown, we had that incredible meeting. In my opinion it was one of the most productive and historic meetings the beef industry has ever had. We were honored to be joined by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, and over a dozen sitting members of Congress.
Obviously, comments made by the President a few days before about his intention to import Argentine beef to lower the price of beef in the U.S. came up in discussion. Everyone in the room seemed to be uniformly concerned by such an approach but focused on the purpose of the Coalition, which is to find solutions to strengthen the beef industry from within. It was a wonderful conversation, and we were so amazed at the time these important folks took to listen to our ideas and concerns in the name of unified betterment of our industry.
The Monday night before the Common Ground meeting, we received word that it might be possible for a small number of Common Ground attendees to meet with the President at some point that week, but details were still being shaped. At the point that a possible meeting was being discussed, we were told we were being tasked with helping to explain how detrimental an import in the name of lowering beef prices could be and how the fundamentals of the cattle industry work. A lot of us would count meeting a sitting president as a bucket list item, and for a while, I thought that personal dream might come true. But, as events unfolded, it became clear that we had a responsibility to politely decline.
While finishing a late dinner after the Common Ground meeting Tuesday night, those of us identified as possible candidates to meet the President received emailed invitations to a presidential “announcement,” rather than a meeting. At this point it had also become clear through further discussion that it was very likely the President had already made up his mind and was moving forward with the Argentinian beef import deal. When we asked for more information about the substance of the announcement, we were not provided sufficient details to make us comfortable that we fully understood what would be presented. We believed that our presence during the announcement would have been seen as an endorsement of whatever was being rolled out, likely an announcement of a trade deal.
We thought long and hard and even a few consulted higher powers before it became clear that we could not go to the President’s announcement without more information, which simply could not be provided at the late hour. Ultimately, we were in D.C. to advocate on behalf of the Common Ground Coalition, a group of unaffiliated and affiliated farmers and ranchers from all across the country who have signed on in support of five very specific concepts. We felt and continue to feel it was our ethical responsibility to advocate on behalf of that group only on the topics those 10,000 people have put their names behind—nothing more and nothing less.
Selfishly, many of us wanted to set those concerns aside and meet with President Trump and, given different circumstances, I would go back to D.C. tomorrow to have the chance. I’ve been asked since that day more times than I care to count if I, LMA, or Common Ground, were the reason the president took to Truth Social on Wednesday afternoon lashing out at the cattle industry.
The facts are that we received invitations to the announcement Tuesday evening and communicated that we couldn’t attend very shortly thereafter. It is impossible for me to know what occurred Wednesday morning or early afternoon that led to the President’s angry post that volatized the live cattle prices and cost families all across the country significant money on their one and only payday. I, like many of you, was shocked and frankly disappointed by the post and its illustration that the President had been given some bad information or simply just didn’t understand how the cattle industry works.
Two things I wasn’t disappointed in happened pretty quickly afterwards. First, President Trump’s USDA put out a multi-page plan to revitalize the American cattle industry. Although mostly conceptual in nature with details still to be fleshed out, it demonstrated that there are those within the President’s cabinet and administration that care deeply about our industry and have worthwhile goals. Second, life-long cattlewoman, sale barn owner, and industry advocate, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and her brethren of livestock-minded members of Congress got to work educating the President. At every turn that group of legislators was working diligently to help the President understand that his words have immense power on the movement of our markets and that cattle producers are price takers not price setters. We, as an industry, are indebted to those members of Congress for their work on our behalf.
I’ve long been an advocate for a free market with a level playing field. I own sale barns and they’re about as heavily regulated by USDA as you could find a business. I’ve been on record for years asking that the packers simply play by the same rules as the rest of us and that the entities charged with enforcing the P&S Act actually do their job and make sure competition has a place to thrive. I still feel that competition and live auction markets are the best places to find true prices for livestock. And I am now confident our President is listening to people who understand the role we play in the taking of prices, not the setting of them.
I, like many of you, would like to go back to the day where all we knew about the President’s thoughts on beef was that he eats his steak with ketchup. I’d like for the rhetoric and divisiveness to end and for those who claim to care about the industry we all so cherish to put their names to the Common Ground Coalition to do real good and make real change that benefit all members of our industry. Whether they be members of the producer groups that work hard for their people or aren’t affiliated with any organization, they’re all welcome. I invite folks to put their swords down, pick their pens up, and sign on to something with real positive outcomes and a unified voice to help producers see a future to get in or stay in this amazing way of life.
###
