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"Trump Take Egg" Was a Sign of Things to Come - Slate
Our long national egg nightmare may soon be over—but other inflation freakouts are likely just getting started. What can the humble but recently quite expensive egg tell us about what lies ahead?
Right now, prices for eggs on grocery store shelves are still very high. But that shouldn’t last much longer: The USDA-tracked average wholesale price for a dozen standard eggs has fallen from $8 as of early March to around $3 in the most recent data. (The reason for the drop is that there’s been a sharp decline in the number of chickens affected by avian flu.) This should result in falling prices at the retail level within “several weeks,” egg economists (egg-conomists, haha) say.
That means politicians, members of the press, and consumers may soon need to find a new symbol of rising costs. With 10 percent base tariffs imposed on most imported goods, and even larger duties levied on imports from the U.S.’s three largest trading partners, there should be a lot of rising costs to go around. Cars and smartphones with Canadian and Chinese supply chains could be the subject of well-publicized sticker shock; the same goes for Mexican-origin groceries like avocados, strawberries, and Modelo. A lot of generic prescription drugs are made abroad, too, and there’s no “kitchen table” issue more basic than grandma’s freakin’ pills.
Whatever replaces it, the egg’s reign as the totemically expensive consumer product—mentioned even more often by politicians and ticked-off voters in recent years than the cost of a gallon of gas—was a lengthy and consequential one. The price of a carton rose by about 20 percent over the course of 2021, and bird flu caused it to more than double in 2022. That was perfect timing for Republicans, whose midterm election strategy was to blame Democrats’ COVID stimulus bill for creating “Bidenflation.” (Whether that was a fair allegation is a touchy subject even among Dems, but suffice it to say inflation, at the least, had other causes too.)
Right now, prices for eggs on grocery store shelves are still very high. But that shouldn’t last much longer: The USDA-tracked average wholesale price for a dozen standard eggs has fallen from $8 as of early March to around $3 in the most recent data. (The reason for the drop is that there’s been a sharp decline in the number of chickens affected by avian flu.) This should result in falling prices at the retail level within “several weeks,” egg economists (egg-conomists, haha) say.
That means politicians, members of the press, and consumers may soon need to find a new symbol of rising costs. With 10 percent base tariffs imposed on most imported goods, and even larger duties levied on imports from the U.S.’s three largest trading partners, there should be a lot of rising costs to go around. Cars and smartphones with Canadian and Chinese supply chains could be the subject of well-publicized sticker shock; the same goes for Mexican-origin groceries like avocados, strawberries, and Modelo. A lot of generic prescription drugs are made abroad, too, and there’s no “kitchen table” issue more basic than grandma’s freakin’ pills.
Whatever replaces it, the egg’s reign as the totemically expensive consumer product—mentioned even more often by politicians and ticked-off voters in recent years than the cost of a gallon of gas—was a lengthy and consequential one. The price of a carton rose by about 20 percent over the course of 2021, and bird flu caused it to more than double in 2022. That was perfect timing for Republicans, whose midterm election strategy was to blame Democrats’ COVID stimulus bill for creating “Bidenflation.” (Whether that was a fair allegation is a touchy subject even among Dems, but suffice it to say inflation, at the least, had other causes too.)
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/donald-trump-elon-musk-news-eggs-bird-flu.html
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