Sen. Elizabeth Warren and several Democratic senators penned a scathing letter claiming that despite Donald Trump’s vow to decrease grocery prices as soon as he took office, he has hardly addressed the cost of food in the flurry of executive orders he released in his first week in office.
In the letter, Trump is accused of breaking a campaign pledge to cut grocery prices on the first day of his administration.
You made several promises during your campaign to immediately cut food prices if elected president. Read the letter that was delivered to Trump on Sunday night and initially reported by NBC News. However, you have prioritized mass deportations and the pardoning of the January 6 assailants within your first week in office.
Trump displayed everything from a tiny box of Tic Tacs at a rally in North Carolina to entire tables full of groceries outside his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to demonstrate his commitment to lowering voters’ grocery bills. Trump made inflation and the cost of food a focal point of his campaign for a second term as president.
However, Warren, D-Mass., stated in the letter, which was co-written with Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and signed by 20 Democrats, that the numerous executive orders that Trump has issued since Inauguration Day only mention food in passing.
Citing a Trump administration memo that pledges to help Americans’ cost of living by removing harmful, coercive climate policies that drive up the prices of food and fuel, they wrote, “Your only action on costs was an executive order that contained only the barest mention of food prices and not a single specific policy to reduce them.”
The letter is sent since the cost of food keeps going up. Grocery prices increased 1.8% between December 2023 and December 2024, according to Labor Department data. The largest price increase occurred for eggs, which rose 36.8% over the same period, largely as a result of a bird flu outbreak that has killed millions of chickens.
In the letter, the Democratic legislators cautioned that businesses frequently take advantage of emergencies such as pandemics and avian flu outbreaks to raise prices above what is necessary to offset growing expenses.
The Trump administration responded to the letter by telling NBC News that it was already taking steps to reduce family living expenses.
On the first day, President Trump acted right away to unleash American energy, which would lower costs for families nationwide, according to White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly. “He has already put an end to the failing economic policies of the previous four years, which were approved by Elizabeth Warren and caused inflation to soar.
Warren has long been a consumer advocate. A bill that would have made it unlawful to sell goods or services at outrageously high prices—a phrase that would be determined by the Federal Trade Commission—was filed by her and others last year. The bill is still pending.
She wrote to then-President Joe Biden in May, urging his administration to improve federal prosecution of price manipulation in order to reduce food costs.
Warren and McGovern chastised Trump for his first week in office in remarks to NBC News.
Donald Trump should buckle down, grab these instruments to cut egg prices, and fulfill his pledges if he is serious about attempting to slash supermarket prices, Warren added.
Trump hasn’t done anything to aid the hardworking people who are suffering to put food on the table or to cut food prices, McGovern continued.
He stated that we are prepared to collaborate with him in order to produce tangible outcomes rather than just platitudes.
The letter to Trump noted that over 90% of Americans were either very or very concerned about the price of goods.
However, you have spent the first week of your administration trying to terminate birthright citizenship, pardoning those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and renaming a mountain, the letter claimed, rather than working to reduce their grocery bills.
Trump stated last month on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker of NBC News that immigration and food affordability were the two key issues that determined his election-day triumph.
“I won on groceries and on the border,” he remarked.
Later in December, however, he acknowledged that it would be extremely difficult to reduce grocery expenses.
He told Time magazine that once something is online, it’s difficult to take it down.
According to Lindsay Owens, executive director of the economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, the president could start by stopping large firms that have recently taken advantage of families.
Families anticipate that President Trump will fulfill his pledges. Owens told NBC News that he would be smart to utilize the FTC and other agencies to invest in supply chains, encourage competition, and combat pricing strategies like surveillance pricing that raise the cost of groceries and food. However, it appears that he is setting himself up for failure based on his initial round of executive orders.