When Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 and again in 2020, one of his loudest promises was to make life more affordable for working Americans. Cheaper groceries, lower costs, “America First” trade wins! It all sounded good. But the results? A kitchen table disaster.
Let’s be clear: food prices didn’t go down under Trump. They went up.
Despite the rhetoric, Trump’s policies fueled some of the worst grocery inflation in modern history. His chaotic trade war with China imposed billions in tariffs on everything from soybeans to meat to fertilizer. The fallout? American farmers got squeezed, global suppliers pulled back, and prices on everyday staples jumped. Trump dished out taxpayer-funded bailouts to agribusiness giants while families saw milk, eggs, and bread creep higher in cost.
Inflation didn’t start with Biden — it caught fire under Trump.
From 2018 onward, inflationary pressure on food prices steadily rose. That’s partly because of short-sighted tariffs that backfired, but also because Trump gutted key parts of the federal regulatory infrastructure. He hollowed out the USDA and FDA’s ability to respond quickly to agricultural crises — right as outbreaks of avian flu and swine fever were sweeping across farms. Egg prices, for example, started climbing in part due to Trump-era failures to contain the spread of H5N1 bird flu.
Then came the pandemic. Trump’s response? Slow, erratic, and more concerned with spin than supply chains. Meatpacking plants became COVID hotspots. Farm labor dried up. Distribution networks buckled. Grocery shelves went bare — not because we didn’t have food, but because we didn’t have leadership.
The result today? Food insecurity levels not seen since the Reagan-Bush era.
Food bank lines have surged back to levels that echo the 1980s — another era of conservative trickle-down promises and real-world struggle. Today, millions of families rely on donations to put food on the table, while billionaires and megacorporations rake in profits. It’s no coincidence.
Trump claimed he’d be the champion of the “forgotten man.” Instead, he served corporate interests and left everyday Americans paying more for less. His policies didn’t just fail to lower grocery prices, they helped drive the crisis we’re still in.
So the next time you’re at the checkout line, watching the total climb, remember: this isn’t just inflation. It’s the compounded cost of failure.
