Despite making lowering food costs a central platform of his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump is admitting that it could be challenging.
Trump stated that he still thinks it will be accomplished through improved supply chains and cheaper energy prices in an interview with Time magazine, which named him the 2024 Person of the Year.
In response to a question about whether his presidency would be a “failure” if grocery costs didn’t decline, Trump said it wouldn’t, while criticizing the Biden administration for how it managed the inflation that first caused food prices to rise.
“They got them up, you see. I want to take them down. Once something is up, it’s difficult to take it down. In the interview that was released on Thursday, he stated, “You know, it’s very hard.”
However, I believe they will. That enthusiasm is going to drag them down, in my opinion. A stronger supply chain, in my opinion, will defeat them. The supply chain is still broken, you know. “It’s broken,” said Trump.
Trump has pledged to boost American energy output even further. It’s already at its highest point ever.
Additionally, he made no mention of how he would address any supply chain problems, instead focusing on criticism of the Biden administration’s electric vehicle incentives.
Actually, according to experts, supply chain problems would probably be made worse by Trump’s much-discussed tariff ideas. According to Reuters, it previously occurred under Trump’s first term, when he imposed additional tariffs in 2018 and the ocean container shipping market charges increased by more than 70%.
Peter Sand, chief analyst at the shipping price platform Xeneta, told Reuters in September that Trump’s import duties are “history repeating” and will drive up ocean container transportation markets, with consumers bearing the expense.
Since the start of the Covid epidemic in the spring of 2020, food costs have in fact skyrocketed, increasing by 23% overall during that time, much of which has occurred under President Joe Biden’s White House term.
But during the past year, the rate of price rise has significantly moderated and is currently less than 2%. The slowdown is caused by a number of causes, including the ones Trump is relying on: Gasoline prices have dropped to multi-year lows at below $3 per gallon and may continue to do so after OPEC said this week that it was lowering its projection for global oil consumption.
According to Xeneta, container transportation costs have decreased after soaring during the summer, and rises in agricultural import prices have also slowed this year, according to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, the development of food prices is infamously erratic, and the government frequently has little influence over many of the variables that affect prices. For instance, the price of eggs is once again rising, mostly as a result of increased demand and decreased supply brought on by avian flu.
Deportations are just another of Trump’s suggestions that will probably drive up food prices even further. Trump once more wavered when Time reporters pressed him on the subject, saying he would still permit some migrants to enter the country lawfully but not those from “jails.”
The majority of farmworkers may actually get work permits once they enter the country, even if they are illegal. In the event that worker pools are limited, crop owners are warning about the impact on food prices and are not taking any chances.
Joe Del Bosque, CEO of Del Bosque Farms in central California, told NBC News Los Angeles last month that “if we have labor shortages, and we can’t get our crops picked and sent to market, it could have an impact at the grocery shelves.” “The produce area may have fewer fruits and vegetables, which could result in higher prices.”
