Opinion: Trump will jack up your food bill

Opinion by Stephen Craven

(CNN) — Until an uptick in March, inflation had waned considerably over the last 18 months. Yet there is an excellent reason why Americans haven’t recognized that fact: They have to eat.

US food prices have exploded since before the Covid-19 pandemic; they went up 25% between 2019 and 2023. The cost of going out to eat shot up even faster. So even as wage growth outpaces inflation, Americans at Kroger or Wendy’s are still feeling sticker shock.

Americans want relief. Former President Donald Trump and his policies, however, are not the answer. Trump will jack up your food bill.

Trump’s proposed tariffs will do immediate damage. He has called for a baseline 10% tariff on all imported goods. Given that the United States imports 15% of its food supply — including nearly all of its coffee and cacao, 60% of fresh fruit and nearly 40% of fresh vegetables — a 10% tariff would amount to a cost increase on some of America’s most important imports.

After all, importers will no doubt pass on the cost to consumers unless they have a reason to eat the cost themselves. As domestic suppliers are unlikely to be able to undercut them on price any time soon (America’s limited coffee farms, for instance, produce nowhere near the amount of coffee Americans drink), consumers are likely to foot the bill.

In Trump’s America, a visit to the produce aisle, candy store or coffee shop will likely cost you. You can check the origin of any product. If it’s of a foreign origin, its price is likely going up if Trump becomes president.

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden has kept in place many of the inflationary tariffs on Chinese products that Trump imposed in his first term, albeit he is not enacting universal tariffs such as Trump is proposing. While Biden has reasons for keeping these tariffs, such as China’s persistent “dumping,” or exporting goods at lower prices than the Chinese charge themselves, as well as national security concerns, there is no question that such tariffs raise the price you pay.

The argument Trump makes for his broader tariffs, on the other hand, is that they would protect American producers and companies. But American farmers do not need protection, and the resulting trade war would cause them severe economic harm. The American agriculture industry is already the strongest in the world. It exports more food than any other country. It produces more food than all but China and India, nations with more than four times our population. American farms are some of the most technologically advanced in the world. When our farmers compete, they win.

But they can’t compete if other countries slap retaliatory tariffs on American goods. Other countries aren’t stupid. They will slap tariffs on products that hurt American producers the most. According to the Congressional Research Service, the soybean, cotton, sorghum and pork industries, among others, suffered losses thanks to China’s retaliatory tariffs. There is a reason why many farmers hated the trade wars of the Trump administration.

Some will hate Trump’s proposed immigration policies even more, however. The former president is promising to impose mass deportations; anyone in the country illegally could be targeted. There are countless arguments about this policy on moral, economic and security grounds, but there is no question that such expulsions would dramatically raise the price of food.

One of the major factors affecting the price of food is the price of labor and whether there are enough people to harvest the food. On average, labor makes up about 15% (and climbing) of a farmer’s costs. And agriculture, like most industries, is facing a severe workforce shortage. Already, an estimated 10 million tons of food are not harvested each year due to labor shortages and other factors, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Such a loss is one of the downsides of historically low unemployment.

Now imagine how much worse the problem would get if Trump’s administration tried to deport the estimated 44% of the US farm workforce that is undocumented. The food supply would crash, and farmers’ labor costs would explode. The price of food would skyrocket.

And going out to eat? That would get unimaginably expensive, as nearly 10% of the restaurant and hospitality workforce is believed to be undocumented, as well.

One could make the case that critical industries should not rely on undocumented workers. But the fact of the matter is that, right now, they do. Deporting those workers would drastically raise prices.

I am only touching on the most direct ways that Trump’s policies would wreak havoc on your food bill, but many of his proposals will turbocharge inflation more generally.

He wants to cut taxes seemingly without substantial cuts to government spending. Doing so would increase the federal deficit, which some economists say would put upward pressure on inflation. During his term in office, he also reduced antitrust enforcement and would likely do so again, so companies could squeeze out competition.

Americans reeling from high food prices could be forgiven for wishing that a businessman in the White House could solve the problem. But looking for Trump’s policies to relieve inflation is like suffering from an upset stomach and reaching for a bowl of jalapeños. If you listen to what he says, it is clear Trump will make the problem much worse.

If Trump is telling the truth about his policies, his claim that he will tame inflation is simply wrong. He will do exactly the opposite.

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