The Controversy That Said It All About America Under Trump

This is part of Egg , an attempt to explain why Americans have absolutely lost their minds over egg prices. 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 .) The next two years were a full-on Age of the Political Egg, with the dairy-aisle item receiving, per the Nexis database, mentions in something like 400 separate Fox News segments. Joe Biden, God bless him, somehow ended up bringing up the cost of eggs before Donald Trump did during their ill-fated June 2024 debate.

During the Trump–Kamala Harris debate, Trump seemed to suggest—in the not-quite-right way in which he often discusses normal-people stuff —that eggs, bacon, and cereal had become unattainably expensive. (He later said he would bring down the price of groceries, somehow, with tariffs , contrasting this with Harris’ alleged plan to impose “communist price controls.” ) Touring a grocery store in Reading, Pennsylvania, in September, J.

D. Vance hit his usual mark—would-be humor that lands in the dead stillness of the uncanny valley —by telling onlookers that his two young sons ate a combined 14 eggs each morning . Democrats like Harris, on their heels, tried to frame the costs of eggs and other groceries as a matter of corporate profiteering —with some justification , it turns out—to little avail.

When Harris lost, it was widely agreed that inflation, as represented by eggs , had been the biggest reason why. And while voters’ judgments about who was at fault may have been questionable, it’s hard to blame them for being alarmed given that, for four decades prior, these kinds of price surges and shortages were mostly unheard of . A $10 carton of eggs was something from crazy world, the kind of thing that happened in other countries.

Biden had been elected to restore national stability. (To put things back together again , if you will.) In the average voter’s perception, his failure to prevent further disruptions to basic routines was evidence of a fundamental weakness .

Related From Slate The Most Underrated Culinary Ingredient Is Nature’s Pairing to Eggs. Too Bad We’re Terrified of It. “I find it interesting how press articles often covered small, locally owned, literal mom-and-pop diners that were struggling to offer the inexpensive breakfast plates for which they’re known and beloved,” said Emily Contois, a professor at the University of Tulsa who studies the relationship between food and culture .

“Diners play an outsized, patriotic role on the campaign trail as they cultivate a sense of working-class authenticity. So this wasn’t just the concern that eggs were expensive and changing what we could cook and eat at home, but also how egg prices were altering these broader food rituals that tap into national identity.” During COVID, she told me, Trump went to dangerous lengths to maintain the supply of meat—an even more resonant protein—to American consumers.

“I can’t help but see a corollary to how Trump thought it was so important during his first administration to keep meat fully stocked in grocery stores,” she said. “Meat symbolizes what it means to eat well for many Americans. Meatpacking is such dangerous work even under typical circumstances, let alone during a pandemic, but these workers were deemed essential because meat is essential to how many Americans conceive of themselves.

” But the story didn’t end with the election—because then Trump was president again, and eggs were still expensive. So just like that, Democrats loved to talk about groceries. The reason for high egg prices was still bird flu, not presidential policy—but in politics, turnabout is fair play, and Trump certainly didn’t give the impression he was making the matter a priority.

In fact, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team accidentally fired members of the Department of Agriculture’s avian-flu staff in February before quickly bringing them back. (The USDA did announce a new billion-dollar bird-flu mitigation program in February.) Popular in News & Politics This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only The Supreme Court Is Handing Trump a Huge Favor It Denied to Biden This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only Some Democrats Are Worried This Is a Political Trap.

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A Federal Judge Is on the Brink of Criminally Prosecuting Trump Officials for Contempt The subject of eggs also gave Democrats an excuse to put off figuring out how to address their party’s deeper issues, or how to make swing voters care about Trump and Musk’s efforts to nullify the Constitution and create a MAGA police state. Given the choice between issuing a press release about egg prices and confronting your simultaneous unpopularity with both your traditional working-class base and your new white-collar professional base ..

. for many Democrats, it isn’t a tough call. The response to tariff-induced inflation will likely follow the egg’s path.

The opposition party will delight in being able to tell a simple story about destructive incompetence, one that resonates even with voters who only get their news by accident from TikTok dance videos; the party in power will try to change the subject , ineffectually. And if Democrats are lucky and dogged enough, eventually they will be back in charge, and will then have the privilege of being blamed when the prices of Modelo, Advil , and the Ford Mustang don’t come down fast enough. Like a chick breaking through a shell, the cycle just keeps on repeating itself.

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