In August 2024, then-candidate former President Donald Trump delivered a press conference surrounded by packaged foods, meats, produce, condiments, milk and eggs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,\u201d he said at the time<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a pledge he repeated on the campaign trail, often followed by the phrase, \u201cdrill, baby, drill.\u201d And to many voters, inflation was a justifiable target: Years of sharply rising prices had taken a toll on their hard-earned pay and their livelihoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Day One has turned into Day Seven, and those eggs are getting even more expensive<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite a flurry of executive actions, Trump\u2019s price-related promises have gone unfulfilled, Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter<\/u><\/a> addressed to the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou have instead focused on mass deportations and pardoning January 6 attackers, including those who assaulted Capitol police officers,\u201d according to the letter signed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 20 congressional Democrats. \u201cYour sole action on costs was an executive order that contained only the barest mention of food prices, and not a single specific policy to reduce them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, the lawmakers added, Trump appears to be \u201cbacktracking\u201d on those promises, conceding in recent weeks that it\u2019s \u201chard to bring things down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance made a similar comment to CBS\u2019s Margaret Brennan<\/u><\/a> when asked about grocery prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPrices are going to come down, but it\u2019s going to take a little bit of time,\u201d he said, adding that the way to lower prices is \u201cto encourage more capital investment into our country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s frequent price-dropping pledges have long been countered by economists<\/u><\/a> who have noted that broad-based price declines not only would be outright dangerous for an economy by creating a deflationary \u201cdoom loop,\u201d<\/u><\/a> but, also, that they\u2019d be improbable to achieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo president is able to lower prices in a week, and some of the promises that were made about how quickly prices were going to come down were probably never achievable,\u201d said Tyler Schipper, economist and associate professor at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota. \u201cSome of the most stark things that people are still seeing at the grocery store are almost entirely due to price dynamics that were in place before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Egg prices, for example, have been driven higher as a result of a deadly bird flu that has constricted supply; meat prices have been on the rise because of ongoing drought; coffee prices are expected to jump<\/u><\/a> because of severe weather in South America; and housing costs will continue to rise because of a long-running shortage of inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has argued that he can help bring down food prices by drilling for more oil domestically; however, the US already is producing more oil than any country in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe incentives [to drill more] aren\u2019t great for oil companies,\u201d Schipper said. \u201cThey certainly want the rights to drill; but given the price of oil right now, there\u2019s not a lot of incentive for them to open up a bunch more oil capacity and push prices down further.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plus, Schipper noted, it takes time to increase production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While more oil might not be as immediate a solution as the president may hope, Schipper said there may be potential in reducing housing regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, that takes time, too, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are lags between changing the policy and then developers seeing changes in policy and then gaming out how much that saves them, then actually building the apartments, and people moving into them,\u201d Schipper said. \u201cBut a lot of that regulation is not at the federal level. A lot of that regulation is at the city and state level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While slowing down inflation takes time (just ask the Federal Reserve), the Democratic lawmakers did offer potential solutions<\/u><\/a> as well as an olive branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you are indeed committed to lowering food prices, we stand ready to work with you,\u201d according to the letter. \u201cLast year, we put forward several recommendations for executive action to lower food prices by encouraging competition and fighting price-gouging at each level of the food supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n