SANTA TERESA, N.M. — Bandanas veiled ranchers’ mouths and noses, shielding them from heavy dust clouds kicked up by the Mexican herds of cattle crossing the United States-Mexico border.

The scene looks routine, timeless. The uncertainty isn’t.

In President Donald Trump’s first 100 days, the borderland’s cattle industry faces a huge challenge: threats of a trade war that’s already hitting consumers in the gut with rising beef prices, from Texas to New York, to California. The on-again-off-again tariff impositions and worries in February and March jolted Mexican cattle producers with mounting economic losses.

“The tariffs, it’s a game killer,” said Daniel Manzanares, director of Union Ganadera Regional de Chihuahua, the Regional Livestock Union of Chihuahua.

The unpredictability of Trump

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