Okay, But Why Are Eggs Still So Expensive?

When Trump was running for office last year, he promised to “lower prices on day one.” So… why are eggs still so expensive? And why are other groceries still so expensive too?

Sure, bird flu is one factor - but it’s actually having less of an impact than you’ve been told. A lot of other factors are at play too, from tariffs to corporate profits to immigration policies that target our agricultural workers. Just this week, Trump announced a new round of tariffs in what he’s ironically calling “liberation day.”

All of this would be bad enough, but in the meantime, Republicans are cutting funding and programs that help struggling families put food on the table. The USDA has stopped $500 million in deliveries to food banks and slashed a billion dollars from programs that helped schools purchase fresh local food. And SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps) is likely to experience major cuts too.

You can’t find a more “kitchen table issue” than what families can afford to put on their literal kitchen tables. Extremists want us to think the economy is too complicated to understand, but it’s actually quite simple: we need leaders who prioritize families over profits. 

Access to food is a basic human right and we need them to treat it that way.

Transcript

Okay, But Why Are Eggs Still So Expensive?

CLIP from Trump: “Grocery prices have skyrocketed, cereals are up 26%, eggs are up 46% and many items are up at much higher rates than that. Everything is bad, and we’re going to straighten it out and we’re gonna get it done fast.”

When Trump was running for office last year, he promised to “lower prices on day one.” So… why are eggs still so expensive? And why is everything else so expensive too? And with such high prices, why are Republicans cutting funding and programs that help struggling families put food on the table?

The price of eggs has risen the most dramatically, but they’re just part of the bigger picture. Grocery prices have been rising across the board. 

But let’s start with eggs as an example. They’re not just a breakfast staple, they’re in so many products, from cookies to pasta to mayonnaise. That means they’re in high demand. Then, on the supply side, we have fewer eggs available because of the current outbreak of avian flu. 

So far, seems pretty straightforward and non-political, right? A lot of demand plus a lower supply means high prices at the grocery store. But there’s a little more going on that you should know about.

For one thing, we could be doing more on the supply side. Farmers need help from the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, to track outbreaks and figure out the best ways to deal with them. And yet, Trump has fired ten percent of CDC workers. There have been cuts at the Department of Agriculture too, including several employees who were specifically working on avian flu. That’s… not great.

Okay, so local supply is down. Can we import more eggs instead? Well, thanks to Trump’s tariffs, that’s not a great solution either. We do get a lot of eggs from Canada, in part because their farms have been weathering bird flu better than ours since they have more small family farms than we do. When there’s an outbreak at a smaller farm, it’s more contained and doesn’t do as much damage as it would at a big industrial farm. Smaller farms are better at weathering other issues too, like diseases and pests. 

But Trump’s tariffs on Canada mean that importing isn’t likely to lower prices. And his tariffs on Mexico are having a big impact on grocery prices too, since we get more than half of our fruits and vegetables from our neighbor to the south. As a reminder, a tariff is charged to the company importing the product, which means they have to charge consumers more if they want to make a profit. Which they obviously do.

But some groups think that high prices can’t just be explained by simple supply and demand. Farm Action, a nonprofit organization led by American farmers, believes that corporate profits are also to blame. Despite the supply issues, profit margins have been steadily increasing for both grocery stores and suppliers. If they’re only raising prices in response to higher production costs, why are their profits going up? Cal-Maine, the largest producer of eggs in this country, just reported an 82 percent jump in their revenue. They made 82 percent more money while Americans struggled to just put food on the table.

And again, it’s not just eggs. This is happening across the board. Corporate profits are at an all-time high, despite the stress that most families are feeling every time we go to the grocery store. With Trump’s history of deregulation and lowering corporate taxes, it’s tough to believe he’s going to crack down on companies like Cal-Maine. And his immigration policies are making things worse too - an estimated 73% of agriculture workers are immigrants, and without those workers, we won’t have enough people to pick our crops. In many places, fruits and vegetables are literally rotting in the fields. 

CLIP from farmer: “You can see here with the fruit on the ground, that this is a real example of us not being able to get the crews to come back around in time. And when we look at the fruit on the ground, we see basically a lot of tears on the ground.”

That means even less supply for our growing demand, and it’s only going to get worse.

Meanwhile, not only are prices still going up, but support for families is going down. Under the Trump administration, the USDA has stopped $500 million in deliveries to food banks, leaving communities scrambling. At the same time, they slashed a billion dollars from programs that helped schools purchase fresh local food. And SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps – is likely to experience major cuts too. Two-thirds of families that receive SNAP benefits include children, and over a third include older adults or people with disabilities.

Those benefits are more important than ever now that grocery prices are so high, but they’ve always been an important way to make sure that Americans can feed their families. 

Americans like Mary Beth, who takes care of her four grandchildren. 

CLIP from Mary Beth: “Caring for my grandkids means the world to me, and I would not change it for the world. I work hard to make sure they have everything they need, but I’m on fixed income and it’s never been easy. At times, I’ve had to skip refilling my prescriptions so my grandkids wouldn’t have to skip meals. This shouldn’t be going on. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. This is a world issue, a people issue.”

Or Amy, a mom who received SNAP benefits after her husband died, which helped her continue to put food on the table for her young kids while she finished her education to become a teacher.

Or Dale, whose family went on food stamps when she was a kid after her dad lost his job. Years later, Dale’s mom paid it forward by running a food pantry in her local town, even getting an award from the county for her work.

It’s true that once prices go up, it’s tough to get them back down again. But there are all kinds of things our elected leaders can be doing to lower the price of our groceries, from supporting family farms, to passing laws that prevent price gouging, to supporting immigrant farm workers.

And in the meantime, we cannot cut programs that help families in need. Access to food is a basic human right, and we need our leaders to treat it that way.



Sources

https://www.cnet.com/home/kitchen-and-household/why-are-eggs-still-overpriced-one-economist-gave-us-an-analysis/

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/price-of-food

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/latest-inflation-statistics/

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/international-markets-us-trade/countries-regions/usmca-canada-mexico/canada-trade-fdi#:~:text=In%20addition%2C%20Canada%20was%20also,of%20%E2%80%9Cagricultural%20products%E2%80%9D)

https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_trump_re_egg_prices.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/business/us-egg-prices-investigation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U4.Va9o.kqRP2xrFKuBI&smid=url-share

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-tariffs-stoke-us-food-inflation-despite-pledge-lower-costs-2025-01-31/

https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2025/trumps-trade-war-timeline-20-date-guide

https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-is-linked-with-improved-health-outcomes-and-lower-health-care-costs

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=107008