On Sunday, Donald Trump shared an article written by conservative activist Charlie Kirk on his Truth Social account that called for Americans to “shut up” about rising egg prices and acknowledge the president’s efforts to lower inflation.
“The high price of eggs is in no way President Trump’s fault,” Kirk wrote in the piece published by the Daily Caller, pushing the blame on former President Joe Biden. “Trump is already hard at work to deliver savings for American families,” the 31-year-old founder and CEO of Turning Point USA wrote, mentioning the president’s intention to cut taxes on tips and Social Security benefits for millions.
Why It Matters
Trump’s tax-cutting policies cited by Kirk are unlikely to have much of an impact on egg prices, which have been surging over the past year as the ongoing outbreak of avian flu has decimated American flocks and led to shortages across the country.
While the president promised during his 2024 presidential campaign to cut the cost of living for American households on Day One, Trump is battling rising inflation and the uncertainty caused in the stock markets by his foreign policies.
The Trump administration admitted that lowering the cost of everyday goods would take longer than initially promised, but the president blamed Biden’s policies’ lingering impact. Should prices continue rising, this will become an increasingly difficult stance for Trump to defend.
What To Know
Trump did not comment on Kirk’s article, limiting himself to sharing it on his profile, which has over 9.2 million followers.
In the piece, “Shut Up About Egg Prices—Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions,” Kirk claims that Trump shouldn’t be attacked over rising prices because the current shortage of eggs is due to the Biden administration’s decision to cull millions of egg-laying hens at risk of being infected with avian flu (H5N1).
Under federal policy, every time a case of bird flu is found on a farm, all the birds must be killed to prevent the spread of the virus, which can potentially infect humans as well. In January alone, 23 million birds were culled on American farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Most countries around the world implement this kind of policy when it comes to the avian flu, but Kirk claimed that Biden’s policies encouraged poultry farmers to “massacre” their flocks.
The conservative activist said that Trump is working to restore America’s poultry flocks, “but raising more chickens to lay more eggs takes time.” Meanwhile, the president is “relentlessly turning over every rock to unleash policies that will put downward pressure on prices,” Kirk said.
Democrats, on the other hand, are blaming Trump and his policies. In a February letter addressed to the president, over 30 House Democrats called for Trump to address the “underlying causes of this crisis” and expressed concerns about his calls to disband the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR).
A spokesman for California Representative Jimmy Gomez, one of the Democrats who signed the letter, told Newsweek: “Instead of pointing fingers, Trump should look in the mirror—he fired OPPR nonpartisan experts working to control the outbreak, tied the OPPR’s hands, and made the bird flu crisis worse. Now, families are paying the price with skyrocketing egg and grocery costs because of Donald Trump.”
What People Are Saying
During his address to the joint session of Congress last week, President Donald Trump said that former President Joe Biden “let the price of eggs get out of control.”
United Egg Producers told The Wall Street Journal that egg farmers are “doing everything they can to fight back against this deadly bird flu outbreak.”
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal: “The Biden administration did little to address the repeated outbreaks and high egg prices that followed. By contrast, the Trump administration is taking the issue seriously. To that end, today I am announcing a comprehensive strategy to combat avian influenza.”
Rollins added, “The Agriculture Department will invest up to $1 billion to curb this crisis and make eggs affordable again. We are working with the Department of Government Efficiency to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending. We will repurpose some of those dollars by investing in long-term solutions to avian flu, which has resulted in about 166 million laying hens being culled since 2022.”
What Happens Next
Despite attempts at dismissing the rising price of eggs, it is clear that the issue bothers and concerns the Trump administration.
Last week, the Justice Department reportedly launched an investigation into the cause of rising egg prices, including whether top egg producers are conspiring to keep them high by holding back supply. The Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation is in its early stages, and it is unclear how long it will run.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects egg prices to increase 41 percent in 2025.
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