Some people are starting to stamp their feet in frustration because inflation is still running high and prices are still increasing at the grocery store. “Why hasn’t Trump fixed this yet?!”
Most people should have realized after COVID that you can’t just switch an economy on or off like a light switch. We’re still on the downhill slide of “10 days to flatten the curve” five years later.
The good news is that President Trump does have a plan to whip inflation and drop food prices back down for American consumers while increasing profits for American farmers and ranchers. Here’s the timeline and what you can expect.
There is some bad news to go with it, however, so let’s get that out of the way first. There’s going to be some short-term pain before we get back to long-term gains and prosperity. Food prices will stay painful for a while as we shift back to President Trump’s model of economic nationalism and domestic food production.
Food inflation is going to continue, so don’t get your hopes up about prices dropping by April or May. President Trump hinted at this during his speech Tuesday night when he told farmers and ranchers to “hang in there” with his plan.
Part of the plan already went into motion this week. After the fake and unelected Biden regime enraged Saudi Arabia last year, OPEC countries slowed oil production down to a trickle. This has kept fuel prices artificially high because the Saudis were so mad at Biden that they wanted to continue crippling our economy.
President Trump called the Saudis last week and repaired relations with them. On Monday, OPEC countries all agreed to start pumping more oil. This will bring down global shipping costs and will begin the process of improving everyone’s economy, including ours. It will take time to ramp up our own oil production after Biden shut it down, but OPEC’s cooperation will start to ease prices immediately.
Next comes fixing our domestic food prices. That’s where Trump’s tariffs really come into play. As Trump noted on Tuesday night, his tariffs will ensure that American farmers and ranchers will no longer have to unfairly compete inside the US market with cheap imported foods.
“Big Ag” is already screaming that Americans will see higher food prices because of Trump’s tariffs. The reality, however, is that this is going to be a repeat of what we went through in 2018/19 after President Trump managed to really jumpstart the American economy. The import/export dynamic of our domestic food production was unbalanced by Joe Biden’s policies. Trump is going to re-balance the supply and demand chain and it will benefit all of us.
Right now, American farmers in the sunbelt states cannot make a profit because of the unbalanced trade equation. Because previous leaders who were stupid and hated America set up these trade deals, we don’t have any tariffs in place to protect American farmers. If Mexico or some other Latin American country can produce something cheaper, they will undercut American producers every time.
We’ve talked about this dynamic previously, such as George W. Bush’s “free” trade agreement with Colombia in 2008. Colombia flooded America with tariff-free roses and flowers and put most domestic American greenhouses and nurseries out of business in California. A $4 billion-a-year American industry was bankrupted because Colombia was allowed to flood the USA with a tariff-free, cheaper product. It didn’t even make flowers cheaper for Americans. Instead, it made a ton of money for Colombia, the distributors, and the flower shops, while bankrupting hundreds of American flower and rose nurseries.
President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs will balance this lopsided arrangement starting on April 2nd. But it will take time for these changes to run through the supply chain before the ripple effect starts to bring down food prices. The price of groceries will inevitably start to come down about six months after that.
By late October or earlier November, domestic food prices will begin to fall, which will benefit every American family. Until then, as President Trump notes, “there may be a bit of an adjustment period.” There might be a little more food inflation until then, but we know that Trump’s economic plan will work because we’ve already been through this before.
The message is that everyone should hang in there, and Thanksgiving will definitely be more affordable this year.
