Why is the price of eggs so high? Trump can't lower it – and doesn't care to. | Opinion
Perhaps if we were dealing with undocumented Guatemalan chickens, President Trump would find time to address the bird flu issue.
Why the heck isn’t President Donald Trump doing something about the price of eggs? I was told, repeatedly, the high price of eggs and other grocery items was the No. 1 issue for American voters, leading them to pick a convicted felon as president over a highly qualified woman.
Once that happened, I figured, “OK, that seems a little crazy, but at least now the egg prices will go down. And I love eggs!”
But now I keep reading that egg prices will continue to rise. A CNN headline the other day read: “Expect record-high egg prices for most of the year.”
I did not expect that! I was told the old guy who got elected president so he could fix egg prices was going to handle that issue. Has he forgotten? Is the 78-year-old Trump, as was often alleged of President Joe Biden, experiencing cognitive decline?
I was told Trump would lower egg prices quickly – but they keep going up
I realize Trump has only been president a short time, but he promised to take care of the egg prices and whatnot quickly, saying after he was elected: “We’re going to bring those prices way down.”
Not to nitpick but “record-high egg prices for most of the year” is neither quickly nor down.
Trump is too busy doing dumb stuff to work on bird flu
Some, of course, will claim this isn’t Trump’s fault, since a key factor in rising egg prices is the spread of bird flu across U.S. poultry farms. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – which Trump recently ordered to halt external communications – more than 136 million U.S. birds have been either infected or killed by avian influenza.
To which I say, “OK, fine. But what is Trump doing to help the poultry industry and contain the spread of bird flu and get my darn egg prices under control so I can afford my morning omelet?”
The answer to that seems to be: bupkis. He’s too busy threatening other countries with tariffs and deporting people, two things that, according to a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review, could be disastrous for America’s food supply and “could turn some items, like berries, into luxury goods.”
I don’t want berries to be luxury goods. I want luxury goods to be luxury goods and berries to be something I have alongside my eggs for a well-rounded breakfast.
Maybe if we just inject all the chickens with bleach egg prices will go down
Perhaps if we were dealing with undocumented Guatemalan chickens, President Trump would find time to address the bird flu issue. Or maybe he thinks he can threaten birds with harsh tariffs and force them to solve their own flu problem.
I’m sure if the U.S. Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC and works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they’ll come up with some kind of vaccine … never mind. That’s not going to happen.
If Trump gets Kennedy confirmed, it’s more likely the administration will try to beat bird flu and drive egg prices down by injecting all of America’s chickens with a cocktail of bleach and horse dewormer.
Either that or Kennedy will force all poultry farmers to feed their birds raw milk.
Gee, maybe a president doesn't really have much sway over food prices
The whole thing is a bit of a mess, and it’s enough to make a person think there’s not a heck of a lot a president can do to wrangle food prices – at least not easily.
On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation”: “Prices are going to come down, but it’s going to take a little bit of time, right?”
OK, I guess.
But there was no moment on the campaign trail when Trump or Vance said they would bring down food costs in “a little bit of time.”
Republicans spent four years blaming Biden for high food prices and inflation, even though everyone knew the COVID-19 pandemic was the primary driver of those issues.
And when inflation started falling, nobody on the right credited Biden. They just kept blaming him for food prices that had gone up and were not – and likely never will – come down.
If Republicans got to blame Biden for food costs, I'm blaming Trump
So if Biden had to own high egg prices even when it didn’t make sense, I’ll be darned if I’m not going to insist Trump own high egg prices now, particularly since he and his administration are focusing on being cruel to transgender people and migrants rather than doing something to make eggs more affordable.
Something like … oh, I don’t know ... maybe HELPING FIX THE STUPID BIRD PROBLEM INSTEAD OF PONDERING AN INVASION OF GREENLAND!!
Anyhoo, over the weekend Trump came close to starting a trade war with Colombia, which could have spiked our coffee costs. He’s still threatening tariffs on Canada and Mexico. U.S. crops are going to start rotting if he deports or scares off migrant farm workers.
Something tells me that “little bit of time” Vance said it would take to lower grocery prices might stretch out to more of a “lot bit of time.”
It's almost as if Trump and Co. never really cared about what regular people pay for eggs in the first place.
Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk