About a month after Election Day 2024, as Donald Trump prepared to return to the White House, the Republican appeared on “Meet the Press” and explained his victory to NBC News’ Kristen Welker.
“I won on groceries,” he said, adding: “I won an election based on that.” Looking ahead, Trump concluded, in reference to food prices for consumers: “We’re going to bring those prices way down.”
After returning to power, the president began boasting about his successes on the issue, assuring Americans that he had lowered the cost of groceries — despite the administration’s own data, which shows grocery costs have gone up this year, not down.
Complicating matters, the president’s own team fears that the problem will soon get worse, as a direct result of the Republican White House’s own agenda. The Washington Post reported:
The Trump administration said that its immigration crackdown is hurting farmers and risking higher food prices for Americans by cutting off agriculture’s labor supply. The Labor Department warned in an obscure document filed with the Federal Register last week that ‘the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens’ is threatening ‘the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.’
According to the Labor Department’s assessment, which was first reported by The American Prospect, the administration needs to act “immediately” to prevent the problem from getting worse.
The Post’s report noted that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has predicted that, in the aftermath of Trump’s mass deportation agenda, the U.S. farm workforce will become “100% American.” Trump’s Labor Department doesn’t see that as realistic, since Americans lack the will and skills to replace migrant farmworkers.
“The Department concludes that qualified and eligible U.S. workers will not make themselves available in sufficient numbers,” the agency said.
In other words, the president who claimed that he won a second term based on food prices, and who vowed to bring consumer costs at grocery stores “way down,” is already lying about his recent record. But making matters even worse is the fact that his own administration expects the problem to get worse, as food production slows as a result of the White House’s campaign against immigrants, which is likely to reduce supply, pushing prices up.
At that point, Trump will have to choose between competing campaign promises: Will he let immigrants stay and help stabilize food costs, or will he deport these workers and risk the fury of consumers who’ll see prices at their local grocery store climb?
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
