Overview
On December 6, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson to each create a Food Supply Chain Security Task Force. The two units are empowered to investigate price fixing and other anti‑competitive behavior across food sectors such as meat processing, seeds, fertilizer, and farm equipment, with a special focus on foreign‑controlled firms. They can bring civil and criminal enforcement actions, propose new rules, and must brief congressional leaders after six and twelve months, explicitly tying food competition policy to both inflation and national security.
The move caps a months‑long shift in Trump’s second term toward treating food and agriculture as strategic infrastructure. It follows a USDA "Farm Security is National Security" action plan, a new DOJ probe of the "Big Four" meatpackers, and a high‑profile $85 million Tyson pork price‑fixing settlement. Supporters see the task forces as overdue scrutiny of an over‑consolidated food system dominated by a few global players; critics worry they will be selectively enforced by a politicized Justice Department and used to justify broader trade and foreign‑investment restrictions under the banner of food security.
Key Indicators
People Involved
Organizations Involved
The Department of Justice enforces federal law, including criminal and civil antitrust statutes, and houses the Antitrust Division.
The FTC is an independent agency charged with promoting competition and protecting consumers, including through civil antitrust enforcement and rulemaking.
USDA oversees federal agriculture, food safety, rural development, and nutrition programs, and enforces the Packers and Stockyards Act in livestock markets.
Four large companies that dominate the U.S. beef processing market and have faced extensive civil antitrust litigation and government scrutiny over alleged price fixing and supply manipulation.
Timeline
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White House and Conservative Media Tout Task Forces as Inflation Fight
Public StatementA White House fact sheet and supportive coverage in conservative outlets frame the task forces as a direct response to persistent grocery inflation and foreign influence, emphasizing that food accounts for a large share of household budgets and recent price increases.
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Executive Order Creates Food Supply Chain Security Task Forces
Executive ActionTrump signs the executive order 'Addressing Security Risks from Price Fixing and Anti‑Competitive Behavior in the Food Supply Chain', instructing DOJ and FTC to each establish a Food Supply Chain Security Task Force, focus on foreign‑controlled firms, and brief Congress at 180 and 365 days.
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Trump Orders DOJ Crackdown on 'Foreign‑Owned Meat Packing Cartels'
InvestigationThe White House announces that Trump has directed DOJ to investigate the Big Four meatpackers for potential collusion and price manipulation, highlighting their 85% market share and foreign ownership.
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Tyson Agrees to Record Pork Price‑Fixing Settlement
LitigationTyson Foods agrees to pay $85 million to settle consumer pork price‑fixing claims, the largest settlement in a long‑running series of antitrust suits alleging a multi‑year conspiracy to inflate pork prices by limiting supply.
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Trump Revokes Biden’s 2021 Competition Order
Executive ActionTrump rescinds Biden’s Executive Order 14036, denouncing it as overreaching and replacing it with a narrower America First antitrust vision that still highlights foreign cartels but pares back broader structural reforms.
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USDA Launches National Farm Security Action Plan
Policy InitiativeSecretary Brooke Rollins announces a multi‑pillar plan arguing that farm security is national security, targeting foreign farmland ownership, agro‑terror threats, and supply‑chain vulnerabilities in agriculture.
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Trump Orders Agencies to Roll Back 'Anti‑Competitive' Regulations
Executive ActionA new competition‑themed executive order directs agency heads, in coordination with DOJ and FTC, to identify and eliminate regulations that stifle competition — blending pro‑business deregulation with selective antitrust rhetoric.
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Trump Declares Trade‑Related National Emergency
Executive ActionTrump signs an executive order invoking emergency economic powers to impose broad tariffs, arguing that foreign trade practices and supply‑chain dependence pose a national‑security threat and have hollowed out U.S. manufacturing and agriculture.
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Pam Bondi Sworn In as Attorney General
AppointmentThe Senate confirms Pam Bondi as attorney general, giving Trump a close ally to steer DOJ, including antitrust enforcement, in line with his 'America First' agenda.
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USDA Proposes Stronger Meatpacking Antitrust Rules
Regulatory ActionUSDA under Biden proposes a rule to clarify how farmers can prove harm from unfair meatpacker practices, part of a broader effort to beef up competition enforcement under the Packers and Stockyards Act.
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Biden Issues Competition EO with Agriculture and Meatpacking Focus
Policy BackgroundPresident Joe Biden signs Executive Order 14036, directing a whole‑of‑government push to promote competition, explicitly calling out consolidation in seeds, fertilizer, equipment, and meatpacking and encouraging stronger USDA and DOJ action. This becomes a key antecedent to later food‑sector antitrust debates.
Scenarios
Selective but Real Enforcement: High‑Profile Cases Against Meatpackers and a Few Foreign‑Linked Firms
Discussed by: Policy reporters (Reuters, Washington Examiner), White House allies, and some farm groups
In this scenario, DOJ and FTC use the new task forces to bring a handful of visible cases — likely focused on the Big Four meatpackers, a small number of large fertilizer or seed firms, and possibly a foreign‑controlled equipment or processing company. DOJ under Bondi pushes at least one criminal case framed as a foreign‑linked cartel threat, while the FTC pursues civil actions and modest rule changes. The administration then touts settlements or consent decrees as proof it is cracking down on price fixing and foreign influence, even if the structural impact on market concentration is limited. Given Trump’s political need to show action on grocery prices and his demonstrated willingness to use DOJ for headline‑grabbing prosecutions, analysts see this as a likely path.
Broad Structural Crackdown on Food‑Sector Concentration
Discussed by: Progressive antitrust scholars, some farm‑advocacy groups, and commentators drawing parallels to early 20th‑century meatpacking regulation
Here, the task forces become the nucleus of a much broader effort that goes beyond a few enforcement actions. DOJ and FTC coordinate with USDA to target concentration across meatpacking, seeds, fertilizer, and major grocery retailers, potentially seeking structural remedies (divestitures, breakup of vertically integrated operations) and sweeping rule changes under both the antitrust laws and the Packers and Stockyards Act. This would echo the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act era and, paradoxically, align Trump’s food‑sector agenda with pieces of Biden’s earlier competition program. Given Trump’s generally deregulatory stance and his revocation of Biden’s 2021 competition EO, most observers see this as possible but not the central intention of the current order.
Symbolic Politics: Task Forces Stall, Little Material Change in Food Markets
Discussed by: Skeptical economists, industry analysts, and some consumer advocates
In this outcome, the task forces conduct limited inquiries, issue briefings to Congress heavy on rhetoric, but produce few major enforcement actions. Structural drivers of high food prices — drought‑driven herd reductions, global commodity markets, trade policies, and domestic tariffs — remain largely unaddressed. DOJ and FTC face internal resource constraints and competing political priorities, while courts remain skeptical of novel antitrust theories. The EO then functions mainly as messaging: a way to blame foreign actors and prior administrations for inflation without fundamentally reshaping market power in the food chain.
Institutional Clash: Courts and Congress Constrain the Task Forces
Discussed by: Legal analysts and governance scholars following Trump’s broader fight with independent agencies and DOJ politicization
A fourth scenario emphasizes institutional backlash. Ongoing Supreme Court litigation over Trump’s removal of FTC commissioners and controversies over Bondi’s management of U.S. attorneys raise questions about the independence and legitimacy of new enforcement efforts. Aggressive task‑force actions, especially if perceived as politically targeted or protectionist, could trigger congressional investigations, budget riders, or court rulings that limit the FTC’s rulemaking power or DOJ’s ability to pursue certain structural remedies. States, private plaintiffs, and USDA’s Packers and Stockyards enforcement might then become relatively more important in policing food‑sector concentration.
Historical Context
The Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 and Early Meatpacking Antitrust
1917–1921What Happened
Amid World War I‑era food price spikes and public anger at the "Big Five" meatpackers, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the FTC to investigate the meat industry “from the hoof to the table.” The FTC found that packers were manipulating markets, restricting the flow of food, and defrauding producers and consumers. After threats of antitrust suits, the packers agreed to a 1920 consent decree, and Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) in 1921 to regulate packers, stockyards, and related livestock markets and to prohibit unfair, deceptive, and monopolistic practices.
Outcome
Short term: The PSA and related consent decrees curbed some overt abuses, established federal oversight of stockyards and meatpackers, and reassured farmers and consumers that Washington was responding to concentration in the meat industry.
Long term: Over the decades, consolidation re‑emerged; by the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a handful of large packers again dominated U.S. meatpacking, and critics argued that enforcement of the PSA had become too weak.
Why It's Relevant
The current Trump‑era focus on the Big Four meatpackers, and the use of antitrust and specialized task forces to police the food supply chain, closely echoes the early 20th‑century effort to rein in dominant packers and links concerns about food prices, farmer power, and monopoly to broader questions of national security and government authority.
Biden’s 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy
2021–2024What Happened
In July 2021, President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14036, launching a whole‑of‑government competition policy that targeted industry consolidation in areas including agriculture, seeds, fertilizer, equipment, and meatpacking. The order encouraged USDA, DOJ, and the FTC to strengthen enforcement of antitrust and sector‑specific competition laws, and led to proposed rules aimed at making it easier for farmers to challenge unfair practices by meatpackers.
Outcome
Short term: The EO catalyzed a flurry of regulatory proposals and signaled a more aggressive federal posture on competition, but many rules faced industry pushback and litigation threats.
Long term: Trump’s revocation of the order in August 2025 created a sharp policy whiplash, but many of the underlying concerns — food‑sector consolidation, farmer bargaining power, and consumer prices — persisted and now re‑emerge in his administration’s food‑security‑framed antitrust campaign.
Why It's Relevant
Biden’s EO provides a clear immediate precedent: a different ideological coalition using antitrust and sectoral rules to address similar structural issues in the food system. Comparing the two illuminates how Trump’s task forces repurpose some of the same tools and targets while embedding them in a more nationalist, foreign‑adversary narrative.
World War I Food Control and the Food and Fuel Control Act
1917–1920What Happened
During World War I, Congress passed the Food and Fuel Control Act (Lever Act) in 1917, giving President Wilson sweeping powers to regulate the production, distribution, and pricing of food and fuel in the name of national security. The act created the U.S. Food Administration, led by Herbert Hoover, which controlled wheat prices, licensed food businesses, and promoted conservation campaigns such as "meatless Mondays" and "wheatless Wednesdays."
Outcome
Short term: Federal authorities used price controls, licensing, and propaganda to stabilize food supplies and prices during wartime, curbing some speculative and monopolistic behavior but also intruding deeply into market operations.
Long term: The Food Administration was abolished in 1920, but the episode established a powerful precedent for treating food supply as an arena of national‑security policy and legitimized broad federal interventions in food markets during crises.
Why It's Relevant
Trump’s framing of an affordable food supply as vital to national and economic security, and his use of executive authority to reshape food‑sector markets, harken back to wartime precedents where Washington treated food not just as a consumer good but as strategic infrastructure — though today’s tools are more focused on antitrust and foreign investment than on direct price controls.