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Home » Transcript: President Trump Signs Executive Orders, Sep. 4, 2026

Transcript: President Trump Signs Executive Orders, Sep. 4, 2026

EDITOR’S NOTE: President Trump held an event at the White House on September 4, 2026, with farmers and ranchers from across the country to announce two executive orders aimed at the meat processing industry. The orders would allow ranchers to process their own meat and sell it directly to consumers, and would authorize ranchers to protect livestock from predatory Mexican gray wolves. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall, and several ranchers from Wisconsin, Arizona, Washington State, and South Dakota joined the president, followed by a press Q&A covering topics including Iran, Russia-Ukraine, China, interest rates, and the economy.

TRANSCRIPT:

Opening Remarks

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, thank you very much, everybody. This is a very important meeting with a great group of people, farmers and ranchers mostly. And today, I’m thrilled to announce that my administration has taken historic action to help our nation’s great cattle ranchers and deliver American meat processed to the highest standard. And any there will be no standard higher in the world and sold at the lowest prices directly to the consumer. Ranchers and farmers have always been a number one priority to me.

I was they like me and I like them. Based on the results in the election, they like me a lot, and I like them a lot. They work hard. They’re smart. They’re efficient, and they are very clean people.

They’re immaculately clean. That’s what we’re talking about. But for years, I’ve heard that they have a problem with the big processes. You have basically four massive companies that process the food, and they have bring it to these processes, and it’s a monopoly, I would say. So I’ve heard all about it.

I’ve been listening to it, the big processes, and they say they’re a very nasty group, very difficult to deal with, and they cost our farmers a lot of money, they cost our ranchers a lot of money, and they cost the public a lot of money and grief. And we’re not going to let it happen any longer. So this is something that nobody thought was ever going to be done. And I have often asked over the last few weeks, I decided to do this, why didn’t other presidents do it? And people just said they just didn’t do it.

Announcement of the Executive Order

But I always hear it’s one of the biggest problems that the ranchers have and farmers have. So for the first time ever, we’re going to give farmers and ranchers the right to process their own food. That’s a big announcement. That’s a big announcement. We’re creating a program where small and medium sized and large ranchers can sell their products directly to consumers so that they don’t have to go through the big four processes and middlemen.

They’re not going to be happy when they hear this. I don’t know who they are, but they’re going to be coming at me at different angles. Will you people please protect me? I’m going to need protection from my NFL guy over there. But, it’s true.

They’re going to be very upset about this because they make a lot of money. We’re streamlining all health and safety regulations to make it easy and safe. The cattle ranchers and the farmers, you know, they’ve run great operations, clean operations, but then they have to go through hell. And we’re going to have very strong safety inspections as you can imagine. But, we’re going to have them process their own food if they want.

They can go through the other places if they still exist. I don’t know if they’re going to exist any longer, frankly. But people have been asking for this change for decades, and we’re getting it done. This is the largest ever government effort to change all federal rules and regulations necessary to support our ranchers and our farmers. And I want to thank Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and all of the people that we work with, including Zippy Duvall, who’s been a friend of mine for a long time.

Zippy. Right?

ZIPPY DUVALL: I got your back, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Did you ever think you’d see the processing thing done, Zippy? Yes.

ZIPPY DUVALL: Uh-huh. Yes, sir.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I especially want to thank the farmers and ranchers who feed our nation from the Great Plains of Texas and South Dakota to the farms and cattle country of California, Arizona, Ohio, a lot of other areas. Under the last administration, American agriculture was decimated by crippling inflation and radical left environmental regulations. They wouldn’t let our farmers, our ranchers breathe.

Farm Economy Under Previous Administrations

Tens of thousands of farms and ranches went bankrupt. They went out of business. Their kids were devastated. The families were devastated under Biden, and they did badly under Obama too. Our cattle herd fell to 86 million, the lowest level in seventy-five years.

We’re building it up now, but it fell all the way down to 86 million, way, way below what it was during my administration. At the same time, the livestock industry has been ripped off by a meat packing monopoly, which we’re probably taking care of, I think, pretty well today, driving down what ranchers earned. They were charging them numbers that were unsustainable. And 2023, if you take a look at it, the worst farm year in the history of our country, they’re saying, where they lost $90 billion was in 2023. And, it was they say, what do I know, a year like no other.

Was it a tough time. Right? Tough time. But under the Trump administration, all of that is changing. We cut crop insurance premiums by more than $400 million.

We eliminated the death tax — when you die, you leave your farm to your children, you don’t have a tax to pay. Saving 2 million family farms.