Despite making lowering grocery prices a central platform of his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump is admitting that it might be challenging.
But in an interview with Time magazine, which named him 2024’s Person of the Year, Trump stated that he still thinks supply chain improvements and cheaper energy prices will make it possible.
When asked if he believes his presidency will be a “failure” if grocery costs don’t decline, Trump said it won’t, while criticizing the present administration for its handling of inflation, which 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,” declared Trump.
Trump has pledged to boost American energy production even more. It is 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 administration, when he imposed new 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 a repetition of history 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: At about $3 a gallon, gasoline prices have returned to multiyear lows and could decline further following anannouncementfrom OPEC this week cutting its world oil demand forecast.
Agricultural import price increases have also moderated this year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, alongside container shipping costs that have come down since surging over the summer,according to Xeneta.
However, the development of food prices is infamously erratic, and the government frequently has no control over many of the factors that affect prices. Egg prices, for example, are once again on the rise,mostly the result ofsurging demand on reduced supplies due to avian flu.
Deportations are just another of Trump’s suggestions that will probably drive up food prices even further. Asked by Time reporters about this issue, Trump again demurred, stating he would still allow some migrants to enter legally but not ones from “jails.”
In fact, most farmworkers, even if undocumented, are nevertheless able to obtain work permits once they enter the United States. Crop owners are not taking any chances and are warning about the impact on food prices in the event of reduced worker pools.
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, Joe Del Bosque, CEO of Del Bosque Farms in central California,told NBC News Los Angeles last month. There could be less fruits or vegetables in the produce area and it could drive prices higher.
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