'Higher than we've ever seen': Even Fox News is focused on soaring food prices under Trump

14 May

Fox News

President Donald Trump campaigned on bringing down food prices "on day one" of his second term. However, prices for many grocery staples have continued to climb. The Wednesday episode of Fox News' "America Reports" featured a segment with an Illinois-based cattle rancher to discuss why beef prices were so high.

Host Sandra Smith began the segment by telling views that if they were "getting ready for the summer grilling season," they "may have had sticker shock" at the grocery store given that beef prices are "soaring to all-time highs." She interviewed Steve Lucie, who is a fifth-generation rancher based in Illinois, and remarked that "people talk about beef prices like they talk about gas prices."

"Prices are higher than we've ever seen them!" Smith remarked. "What is driving them?"

Lucie said that the beef herd in the United States was "at a 75 -year low," and chalked up the high prices for beef to basic supply and demand.

"We just simply do not have the cattle in the countryside that we used to have. That's the quick and easy answer to this," Lucie said. "The reason that that is the case, that's the bigger problem. The reason that we have such a low beef herd, there's a lot of tentacles out there and there's a lot of reasons for it."

At that point, Smith dug into the numbers, pointing out that according to the St. Louis Fed, prices for both steak/sirloin/USDA choice/boneless beef as well as for ground beef were at all-time highs. And she observed that prices "may not be coming anytime soon." Lucie agreed with that assessment.

"It takes a lot of time to build a beef herd," he said, noting that it's been difficult convincing younger Americans to move to rural areas and become ranchers. "Many people got out of the industry."

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