Trump says he won the election because he used the word “groceries” Does he have anything to say about them now?
During the presidential campaign last year, President Trump made a series of speeches and appearances at economic clubs around the country. He didn’t give the kind of formal speeches other candidates give to crowds like that which you would expect to be knowledgeable about finance and expecting serious plans a policies to meet the challenges of the current economy. He mostly just gave his usual stream of consciousness “weave” about whatever topic engaged him that day interspersed with some dull rote words on the teleprompter written by a campaign staffer. But during the Q&As he was often stymied by questions for which he was totally unprepared.
Perhaps the most famous instance was at the New York Economic club when a member asked him what he planned to do about the crisis in child care and he gave a meandering answer worthy of a 4th grader giving a book report of a book he hadn’t read. He said “childcare is childcare” and then basically said that his tariffs would somehow fix the problem.
As the campaign wore on and the campaign tightened up after President Biden dropped out, he had to make some “populist” gestures for the rubes. His campaign staff was reportedly frantic for him to talk about inflation so they assembled an event at his exclusive golf resort at Bedminster, New Jersey where he was surrounded by various food props. Unfortunately, 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 it like it was the first time he’d ever been in one, as it may well have been.
He believes that he won the election on the basis of using the word “groceries” which he apparently believes is a unique term that only he had the savvy to deploy in a campaign.
Trump was never able to really say how he intended to bring down costs. Tariffs were his number one go-to answer to every economic question followed by “drill, baby, drill” as the solution to inflation and “growth” as the answer to deficits. That was basically his entire economic plan and in the midst of what was an overwhelming backlash against the post-pandemic inflation of 2022-2023 it seemed to be all that most voters needed to hear, at least the plurality that put him in the White House.
There was a group of enthusiastic 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 the prospect of deregulation and tax cuts, the holy grail of the billionaire class. Like most Americans, supporters and opponents alike, they don’t believe most of what he says anyway, which is one of the great sources of his power. They all figure his tariff threats are empty and even if they aren’t they can probably buy their way out of them. Just sending the message that any legal enforcement that might hurt the bottom line will no longer be pursued is enough to get them rushing to pay tribute to a president who is desperate to be a member of their exclusive club.
Former Trump advisor and podcaster/activist Steve Bannon has been outspoken against the tech-bro oligarchy led by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who now sits at the elbow of Donald Trump, going so far as to call him “evil” and vowing to purge him from the MAGA movement. But Bannon wasn’t invited to the inauguration, Musk was, along with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook among other billionaires and they sat in pride of place right in the front row while Senators and Cabinet members were seated behind them. Everyone knows who’s got the president’s ear in this term. Let’s just say that none of them are worried about the price of groceries.
In his interview with TIME magazine, Trump admitted that lowering costs is “hard” essentially telling everyone not to get their hopes up. And 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, even pushing to build many new coal plants to power his new AI initiative. That’s not even the half of it. But none of it will lower costs. In fact, he’s going out of his way to do the opposite.
As NBC news reported, one of his Executive Orders from the first day rescinded the Biden policy to study how to further “lower prescription drug costs for people on Medicare and Medicaid, on enhancing the Affordable Care Act and increasing protections for Medicaid enrollees.” Whether he will seek to roll back “the $35 monthly cap on insulin, the $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on prescription drugs and Medicare’s negotiating drug pricing” isn’t yet known, but let’s just say it isn’t a good sign that he called the programs “radical” and “deeply unpopular” both of which are lies.
On Thursday Trump spoke before the World Economic Forum and reiterated his tariff threats which everyone with an 8th grade education should know will cause prices to rise. He demanded that the Fed lower interest rates and said 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 them to become the 51st state so we won’t have to hit them with tariffs.
All of this is nonsensical gibberish, but if he does follow through, as he seems intent upon doing, the result will almost certainly be much higher gas prices:
The irony is thick. He 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 raise tariffs on Mexico, look to see your grocery bills skyrocket as well.
He says he wants to abolish FEMA and make the states take it over. (Of course the reason FEMA exists is because states simply don’t have the means and the infrastructure to do that.) And anyway, we know that Trump was only talking about denying aid to blue states like California which Republicans believe doesn’t deserve to be helped by the rest of the country. (They’re just supposed to send in lots of money to support the red states as they’ve been doing for decades.)
You will certainly remember that the price of eggs was the symbol of Democratic failure and seen by many as the avatar of pain at the grocery store. Well guess what?
Right now the US poultry industry is under tremendous threat from H1N1 bird flu and it’s making people sick and causing the price of eggs to skyrocket. That isn’t Trump’s fault but then the price spike in 2023 wasn’t Biden’s fault either. However, Trump freezing the National Institution of Health programs and the muzzling of the public health agencies is also going to lead not just to potentially deadly health outcomes but higher costs as well. Not to mention it’s going to be very difficult for the public to know about the threat. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into another pandemic.
But don’t despair. Trump did sign an Executive Order requiring all of his agencies to figure out ways to lower costs of everything. They’ll be reporting back to him with their plans in a month so I’m sure it’s all going to be taken care of.
Since the election Trump’s 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 and are just thrilled that we’re going to invade Greenland and turn Canada into the 51st state. But if not, Trump may see his approval rating take a precipitous slide as he hobnobs with his personal coterie of cyber-barons and makes money for himself hand over fist while the rest of America watches their paychecks shrink for no good reason.
Salon
