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U.S. beef off the menu as the trade war hits Beijing's southern BBQ restaurants

Published: 21 Apr. 2025, 16:10

YIM SEUNG-HYE
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Charles de Pellette, operations director of Home Plate BBQ, poses next to U.S. beef and pork in a smoker at the American-style restaurant in Beijing, China, on April 17. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

At Home Plate BBQ, a U.S.-style restaurant in Beijing, staff are reprinting menus. The U.S.-China trade war means that U.S. beef — once the star ingredient — will soon be off the table.

Home Plate's beef, previously sourced entirely from the United States, is increasingly Australian. The restaurant uses about seven to eight tons of brisket each month, and when the U.S. beef in the freezers is used up in a few weeks, the southern-style BBQ restaurant will only serve meat from Australia.

U.S. beef is one of thousands of casualties in the trade war between the world's largest trading partners. Even before the battle began, U.S. beef was expensive. Beijing's 125 percent retaliatory tariffs, on top of the existing 22 percent, made it unaffordable.

"It's essentially just made it very hard for us to continue using U.S. beef," said Home Plate's operations director, Charles de Pellette.

While the $125 million a month in U.S. beef exports to China is a sliver of the mammoth goods trade, beef's disappearance from menus in the country is a glimpse of the fate to come for thousands of products on both sides of the Pacific.

"Once we deplete our stocks, we'll be switching fully over to Australian M5," de Pellette said. "We still think that it's the same taste and quality and flavor, but we've had to switch just due to market pressures and the tariffs."

The pork ribs, too, are a-changing. They'll now come from Canada, he said.

A view of the interior at Home Plate BBQ, an American-style restaurant, in Beijing, China, on April 17 [REUTERS/YONHAP]

The experience of the restaurant chain, which has three branches in China and was co-founded by a Texan, is being repeated across Beijing restaurants, according to a beef supplier based in the capital who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussing tariffs.

"They have to switch to Australian beef — even the American steak restaurants," the beef supplier said.

De Pellette declined to disclose how much Home Plate is paying for Australian beef.

U.S. beef was getting expensive before the trade war began in part because of shortages caused by years of dry weather that shrank herds to their smallest since the 1950s. Those higher prices were hard to swallow in China, where a weak economy has made consumers especially price-conscious.

U.S. brisket prices rose by nearly 50 percent between last May and March before skyrocketing further after the tariffs — leaving supplies depleted or costs almost double what they were a year earlier.

Australia is looking to fill the gap, including with brisket that's 40 percent cheaper. And at Home Plate, they've had success. Come May, diners will be tucking into Australian beef ribs, brisket and sausages smoked low and slow in the tradition of Texas and the American South.

"We've tested it for a few months and we found that actually it's just as good, and our customers are pretty happy with it," said de Pellette.

Reuters