The Trump administration can’t seem to decide whether it wants the price of eggs to fall or rise.
That might tell you something about the White House’s confused, economically illiterate approach to trade policy more generally.
At a Cabinet meeting in late February, President Donald Trump demanded action to reduce egg prices. “We have to get the prices down,” he said. “The prices of eggs and various other things.”
Egg prices had spiked to an average of $5.90 per dozen in February, largely due to a bird flu epidemic that led to the death of over 30 million chickens (many of them killed by farmers in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease) during the winter months. In response, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced plans to import more eggs, largely from South Korea and Turkey. (Yes, those would be Turkey eggs, but not turkey eggs.)
Just weeks later, the Trump administration slapped a 10 percent global tariff on nearly all imports to America—including those foreign eggs.
“Will those eggs be tariffed coming in from Turkey or South Korea, wherever they are? Yes, they will, but the market in America is already adjusting,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox News earlier this month. She said the tariffs would not cause a further spike in egg prices.
This makes little sense. Tariffs are taxes paid by consumers in the form of higher prices, so the tariffs on imported eggs are directly raising the price of the very imports that were supposed to help reduce the prices that Americans pay for eggs.
And just in time for Easter.
Trump was right, in February, to worry about rising prices, which people don’t like. Democrats paid a political price for presiding over an economy beset by high inflation in 2024, and Republicans are probably right to fret that they will be blamed next if the price of eggs continues to set uncomfortable record highs.
So then why pursue tariff policies that deliberately hike prices?
There’s actually a more fundamental question to be asked here. If the Trump administration believes that increasing imports—that is, engaging in more trade on the global market—is one way to reduce the price of eggs, might that same logic apply to other goods as well? Tariffs reduce imports and limit competition, which naturally causes prices to rise (even for goods that are made in America and aren’t directly subject to the tariffs).
Those additional imports might be helping keep prices from spiking even higher. In its weekly report on the egg market, the USDA said that “price levels to the consumer have eased considerably from early-year highs but remain at levels not yet conducive to more than normal purchases needs.” But there’s no doubt that tariffs will apply pressure in the opposite direction.
As things stand now, the Trump administration’s egg policy is completely scrambled.
