President Donald Trump salutes during the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
Whether making it harder for American farmers to sell their wares or overseeing the sale of lettuce that induces explosive diarrhea, President Donald Trump has long struggled during his second term with meeting Americans' food needs.
Now a recent report reveals the extent to which Trump's policies are directly responsible for hurting Americans in their stomachs — and their wallets.
"America's grocery squeeze has thus far been most painfully felt in a few expensive categories, like beef, coffee and chocolate," reported Axios' Erica Pandey on Sunday. "Now, the forces pushing up food prices are starting to pile up: expensive grain, soaring fertilizer and fuel, plus unpredictable weather and raging wars."
Pandey went on to break down exactly how much of this is Trump's fault.
"The Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars have driven up diesel prices, making it more expensive to operate farm equipment for harvesting and to truck food from suppliers to stores," Pandey explained. "The war in Iran has also disrupted fertilizer supply and price, as a large share of the world's fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Corn and wheat prices are surging, this week hitting their highest level in three years. Bad weather has hit corn crop yields, and the Russia-Ukraine war has roiled wheat exports."
Ultimately, Pandey projected that the food price situation is bound to deteriorate.
"There's reason to believe it's only going to get worse," Pandey wrote. "In a widely cited report earlier this month, J.P. Morgan analysts warned that global food inflation would hit 5 [percent] in the first half of 2027, nearly double what it was in the first half of 2026. 'Price pressures are expected to extend through (the first half of 2027), as crop and price effects are still building and agricultural impacts lag the oceanic peak by 6 to 12 months,' they wrote."
In addition to overseeing rising prices in food, Trump has also overseen a noted decline in food safety, which many critics attribute to his gutting of the FDA and appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“The FDA believes that the biggest outbreak this season, the one affecting nine states so far, came to us aboard contaminated iceberg lettuce from Mexico,” CBS News' David Pogue wrote on Sunday. “That lettuce was shipped nationwide by Taylor Farms, a huge distributor that supplies thousands of groceries and restaurants.”
One expert noted that it is difficult to imagine the diarrhea lettuce problem is not directly linked to Trump's administration.
"We've never seen anything like this. This is just an astonishingly large outbreak, record-setting outbreak," explained Susan Mayne, an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Public Health who ran the FDA’s food-safety department from 2015 to 2023, to CBS News.
She continued, "It could be inadequate bathroom facilities, inadequate hand-washing facilities. Somehow that water is getting contaminated from some other source – sewage, some other source."
