Egg prices are down. In part because Trump allowed egg imports. Beef steaks and ground beef prices zoomed up; in order to reduce costs to consumers, Trump has quadrupled the Argentina import quota… Why not allow more tariff free imports of coffee? Of steel? Of Aluminum? Of garments?
Figure 1: Beef steak price (blue), ground beef price (tan), ground coffee price (green), all nsa, in logs, 2025M01=0. Source: BLS via FRED, and author’s calculations.
Egg prices have come down 29.6%relative to January 2025. However, some credit — as mentioned previously — has to go to increased import flows.
Source: The Poultry Site13 October 2025.
I wish the Trump administration would incorporate this result into their thinking on trade policy formulation. In particular, I think it would be a freebie to lower tariffs on coffee, there being only an incredibly small domestic producer constituency for such protection.
