President Donald Trump, as president-elect, insisted he “won an election” based on the price of groceries —and promised to “bring those prices way down.”
“Very simple word, groceries,” Trump told Meet the Press host Kristen Welker in December. “Like almost, you know, who uses the word? I started using the word – the groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that.”
“We’re going to bring those prices way down,” Trump insisted.
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But now, a mere three months after that interview and six weeks into his presidency, Trump would very much like you to stop talking about the cost of groceries — or, at least, “shut up about egg prices” — according to an op-ed by Turning Point Action CEO Charlie Kirk reposted by the president to his Truth Social feed Saturday.
Per the Guardian, “Egg prices have soared to record highs this year, with the cost of a dozen large eggs hitting almost $5 in January – more than two and a half times the average price three years ago, before the avian flu outbreak.”
Kirk’s own op-ed even has the cost of a dozen eggs “around $7, up from just $2 in October.”
But to Kirk, “the high price of eggs is in no way President Trump’s fault.” Instead, the conservative pundit lays the blame squarely at the feet of former President Joe Biden.
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Kirk, in his op-ed promises, the current president’s policies “will put downward pressure on prices” — because, he writes, “the building blocks of America’s next great low-inflation, high-wage growth boom have already been laid.”
“And soon enough, so too will the eggs,” Kirk muses.
But despite Kirk’s insistence, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — headed by Trump appointee Brooke Rollins — in February predicted egg prices could climb more than 40 percent this year as bird flu forces farmers to cull “more than 166 million birds” — including “30 million egg layers,” the Associated Press reports.
“It’s going to take a while to get through, I think in the next month or two, but hopefully by summer,” Rollins said in February.
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But as the AP reports, while Rollins’ USDA vows to identify “the most effective measures farmers can take” against bird flu, Brian Earnest, lead economist for animal protein at CoBank, is skeptical that things will look much different from Biden to Trump.
“I don’t see a whole lot here that is a big change here from the current plan of action,” Earnest said in February.
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