During the presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump made a series of speeches and appearances at economic clubs around the country. He didn't give the formal speeches other candidates give to crowds like that, which you'd expect to demonstrate some knowledge about finance and to express plans and policies aimed at meeting the challenges of the economy. He mostly just gave his usual stream-of-consciousness "weave" about whatever topic engaged him that day, interspersed with some rote words on the teleprompter written by a campaign staffer. But during the Q&A sessions, Trump was often stymied by questions for which he was totally unprepared.
Perhaps the most famous instance came at the Economic Club of New York, where someone asked him what he planned to do about the crisis in child care and he gave a meandering answer worthy of a fourth-grader's book report on a book he hadn't read. He began by saying that "child care is child care" and then suggested that imposing tariffs on imported goods would somehow fix the problem.
As the campaign wore on and tightened up after Joe Biden dropped out, Trump was forced to make some "populist" gestures for the rubes. His campaign staff was reportedly eager for him to talk about inflation so they assembled an event at his golf resort in New Jersey where he was surrounded by various food props. Instead he got caught up in his "weaves" and barely addressed the topic. They kept trying. A few weeks later he turned up at a grocery store and walked around as if it was the first time he'd ever been in one. It may well have been.
Trump evidently believes he won the election because he used the word "groceries," which he thinks was a unique and brilliant innovation that he was the first to deploy in a presidential campaign.
But he never really explained how he intended to bring down costs. Tariffs were his No. 1 go-to answer for every economic question, followed by "drill, baby, drill" as the solution to inflation and "growth" as the answer to deficits. Those catchphrases were basically his entire economic plan, and in the midst of overwhelming backlash against the post-pandemic inflation of 2022-2023, that seemed to be all most voters needed to hear. Or at least it was enough for the plurality that put him in the White House.
Trump evidently believes he won the election because he used the word "groceries," which he thinks was a unique and brilliant innovation that he was the first to deploy in a presidential campaign.
There was a group of enthusiastic Trump backers who knew better, of course. The cyber-barons, CEOs and Wall Street big-money boys understood that the only thing he was bringing to the table was more deregulation and bigger tax cuts, the Holy Grail of the billionaire class. Like most Americans, Trump supporters and Trump opponents alike, they don't believe most of what our new president says, which is one of the great sources of his power. They figure his tariff threats are empty, and if they aren't, the rich guys figure they can buy their way out of them. Just sending the message that any form of regulation or enforcement that hurts the bottom line is being dropped gets them rushing to pay tribute to a president who's desperate to be a member of their club.
Former Trump adviser turned podcaster Steve Bannon has been outspoken against the tech-bro oligarchy led by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who now sits at Trump's elbow. Bannon has even called Musk "evil" and vows to purge him from the MAGA movement. Then again, Bannon wasn't invited to the inauguration and Musk was, along with Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Apple's Tim Cook, among other billionaires. They sat in the front row, while senators and members of Trump's incoming Cabinet were behind them. Everyone knows who's got the president's ear in this term, and it's safe to say none of them are worried about the price of groceries.
In his interview with Time magazine, Trump admitted that lowering costs will be "hard," and essentially told everyone not to get their hopes up. Since he's taken office, he's issued a flurry of executive orders and policy changes, from freezing cancer research, rescinding civil rights protections, muzzling public health communications and even pushing to build new coal plants to power his new AI initiative. That's not even the half of it, but none of that stuff will lower prices for consumers. If anything, he's going out of his way to do the opposite.
As NBC News reports, one of Trump's executive orders on his first day rescinded Biden's policy to study how to further "lower prescription drug costs for people on Medicare and Medicaid," as well as how to enhance the Affordable Care Act and increase protections for Medicaid recipients. Whether the Trump administration will seek to roll back the $35 monthly cap on insulin, the $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on prescription drugs or Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug pricing isn't clear, but he called those programs "radical" and "deeply unpopular," which is an outright lie.
On Thursday, Trump spoke before the World Economic Forum and reiterated his threats of massive tariffs, which everyone with an eighth-grade education understands will cause prices to rise. He demanded that the Federal Reserve lower interest rates further and faster, saying later in the day that he "knows interest rates much better than they do." He once again claimed that "we have a deficit" with Canada and encouraged our northern neighbor to become the 51st state so the U.S. doesn't hit them with tariffs.
All of that is gibberish, but if he really does follow through on tariffs, the result will almost certainly be higher gas prices:
The irony here is thick. Trump claims that the inflation of three years ago was caused by high energy costs, and here he is promising to raise the price of gas. If he fulfills his threats to impose stiff tariffs on Mexico, look to see your grocery bills skyrocket as well.
You may remember that the rising price of eggs became the symbol of Democratic failure and was seen by many as the avatar of pain at the grocery store. Well, guess what?
Right now the U.S. poultry industry is under tremendous threat from H1N1 bird flu. It's making people sick and causing the price of eggs to skyrocket. That isn't Trump's fault, but the price spike of 2023 wasn't Biden's fault either. But Trump's freeze of NIH programs and his muzzling of public health agencies is also going to lead not just to potentially deadly health outcomes but higher costs as well. Not to mention that it will be difficult for the public to get any accurate information about the threat. Let's hope this doesn't turn into another pandemic.
Trump claims that the inflation of 2022 was caused by high energy costs, and here he is promising to raise the price of gas. If he imposes tariffs on Mexico, look to see your grocery bills skyrocket as well.
But don't despair. Trump did sign an executive order requiring all government agencies to figure out ways to lower the costs of everything. They'll report back to him with their plans in a month, so I'm sure it'll all be taken care of.
Since the election, Trump has spent most of his time hobnobbing with billionaires and obviously not giving the price of groceries a second thought. Perhaps Americans have moved on and don't care about the price of eggs anymore. Maybe they're thrilled at the prospect of invading Greenland, Canada and Panama, all at the same time. If not, Trump may see his approval rating take a precipitous dive as he pals around with cyber-barons and makes money for himself hand over fist while most Americans watch their paychecks continue to shrink for no good reason.
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