Wholesale beef and pork, read like a trader does.

Today's tape is being driven by a clean split between what trim and middle meats are telling buyers. Chemical lean 50s at 191.66c have moved sharply on the month and history projects another 9c of upside over the next four weeks, while 92-94 CL at 493.99c sits at a level that reflects a genuinely constrained cow kill, with imports filling some of the gap but not enough to loosen the tone. Ball-tip at 647.36c gained hard on the day but seasonally tends to shed around 9c from here, and today's beef load count running roughly 16 cents thin relative to pork's heavy flow raises a question about how durable that middle-meat firming actually is. Trimmed tenderloin at 1501c has shed nearly 52c on the week and sits at a calendar position where it historically recovers 44c into early summer, making the current softness look structural rather than directional. The Brazil-China tariff story reducing Brazilian export availability is the forward catalyst that could tighten the lean complex further before next Friday's USDA data cycle resets the read.

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