Millionaire frets that CEOs will also suffer as consumers ‘run out' of cash

The ongoing rise in prices under President Donald Trump, which is being exacerbated by the war in Iran, has prompted one food CEO to cut prices for his company’s products as consumers “run out of money.”

“Consumers are literally running out of money toward the end of the month,” Kraft Heniz Chief Executive Steve Cahillane told The Wall Street Journal’s Jesse Newman in an interview that ran on Wednesday. “Being there with the right offering at the right time has never been more important.”

Kraft Heinz is working to lower prices to keep purchases up, but there's only so many cuts a company can make before the destroying profits. Nevertheless, Cahillane explained that passing down savings is necessary because of rising inflation.

“We could see more significant inflation, and nobody wants to see that because in our industry we still haven’t seen a return to volume growth,” Cahillane said. “We had four years of volume degradation because the consumers had to absorb too much price. I think the industry has been battling to be as affordable as possible, but the consumer hasn’t been able to really handle that.”

"Seeing another wave of inflation is not what anybody wants to see," added Cahillane, "and nobody wants to be out there taking more price [increases], but it’s just the world that we live in — we have to be prepared for what could be yet again another unprecedented event. Nobody had in their plan a war in the Middle East."

The CEO said prices were high prior to Trump’s reelection in 2024, but they have increased significantly since he took office in part because of his tariffs and his unexpected war against Iran. As a result, vulnerable economic sectors like American farms have taken a major hit.

"Few professions have been as reliably supportive of Donald Trump as farmers, and few U.S. states voted for him by a greater margin than Mississippi," i Paper reporter Kieron Monks wrote on April 30. "But now, agricultural workers in the southern Republican stronghold say they are suffering from the effects of the President's war on Iran."

Iran’s decision to block the Strait of Hormuz has caused major hardships for farmers who rely on low gas and fertilizer prices.

"The national average of gasoline prices hit a four-year high of $4.23 (£3.14) on Wednesday, (April 29), a 40 per cent surge on pre-war prices, according to the AAA motor club," Monks reports. "Economists say that some demographics key to Trump's electoral success could be among the most affected by war-related price rises, with some of the worst impacts yet to come."

Even some of Trump’s fellow conservatives, like former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Phil Gramm and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute Michael Solon, have argued that rising prices are only going to get even higher in 2026.

“Things will get worse in 2026,” Gramm and Solon recently wrote for The Wall Street Journal. “The Congressional Budget Office projects that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will generate $331 billion this year, while the CBO estimates the new tax cuts will save taxpayers $230 billion. Families and businesses will be worse off on net.”