Trump orders will increase grocery prices

Throughout election season, Republicans campaigned on bringing down prices for Americans — specifically in the grocery store.

“They’re going to be affording their groceries very soon,” Donald Trump said in December. “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one.”

Day one has since come and gone and while he signed the most day one executive orders of any president since 1937, none target the price of food and other grocery items. In fact, several of them threaten to topple the American food system.

The only thing close to helping is in the “Delivering emergency price relief for American families and defeating the cost-of-living crisis.” This primarily talks about cutting out regulatory fees Trump sees as driving up the cost of housing. The only part talking about food is when he orders heads of all executive departments and agencies to “eliminate harmful, coercive ‘climate’ policies that increase the cost of food and fuel.”

While transportation cost is certainly one reason prices have gone up, there are a multitude of bigger issues our food system faces including the price of raw materials, animal diseases like bird flu and the war in Ukraine.

Known as As “the breadbasket of Europe,” Ukraine historically accounted for 9% of the global wheat market and 12% of the corn market, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Meanwhile, Republicans have been calling for us to stop sending aid.

The top two ways Trump’s policies will cause devastating impacts to prices and overall food availability lie in his deportation and tariff policies.

Under his “Securing our borders” executive order, Trump calls for “Removing promptly all aliens who enter or remain in violation of Federal law.” This means undocumented immigrants, no matter how long they’ve been in America, will be forcefully removed and deported.

Maybe you think this is a good thing. Maybe you think they should come here legally, never mind how incredibly expensive and difficult it is. But if you aren’t concerned for the well being of immigrants, have you thought of how this will impact you? With these mass deportations, everyone loses.

For starters, Trump has never announced how he plans to pay for this massive undertaking. According to the American Immigration Council, “The cost of a one-time mass deportation operation aimed at both those populations— an estimated total of 13.3 million immigrants without legal status—is at least $315 billion.” They go on to clarify this number is a conservative estimate.

Not only is the price astronomical, but in the modern era, the U.S. has never deported more than half a million immigrants per year and many of those have been migrants apprehended trying to enter the U.S., not just those already living here. Just how does Trump plan to carry out the largest law enforcement operation in history?

Let’s forget the “how” and assume he gets it done. Donald J. Trump mass deports 13.3 million immigrants and the U.S. is legal citizens only. How do you think our workforce will respond to a loss of 13.3 million people?

More than a million construction workers are undocumented immigrants, making up more than 13% of the workforce. More than 12% of the agriculture workforce is undocumented. A million hospitality workers will be deported.

With an unemployment rate averaging under 4% since 2022, U.S.-born workers could not fill all the jobs of undocumented workers even if they tried to.

“More importantly, undocumented immigrants often take jobs that employers say many U.S.-born workers are not willing to take on, like cutting meat, washing dishes or cleaning hotel rooms,” American Immigration Council states. “In 2022, more than one-third of the country’s plasterers and stucco masons, drywall installers and ceiling tilers and roofers were undocumented immigrants.”

But I want to focus on agriculture and food production. Who is going to step up and fill these roles to ensure dairy farms have enough staff to provide milk? Who will volunteer to go help the farmer in South Dakota who is going to lose most of his workforce and likely his farm? How will we fill nearly 250,000 jobs across the United States who work to ensure food is stocked in the grocery store?

You think prices are high now? Wait until we are producing less and forcing stores to pay tariffs on produce coming from other countries. Good luck finding food let alone affording it.

For those of you thinking we are sticking it to other countries by forcing them to pay tariffs, you’ve got it backward. We pay the tariffs on any incoming products. The grocery store, the warehouse, the factory, they pay the tariffs and then increase their prices to offset their cost. The only person Trump is sticking it to is us.