Summary
Vice President JD Vance claimed that Donald Trump’s policies will lower grocery prices, but he failed to provide details.
Instead, Vance emphasized vague goals like increasing capital investment and job creation.
Meanwhile, Trump’s recent tariff threats, including a 25% increase on Colombian coffee imports, have driven coffee prices higher, exacerbating grocery costs.
Critics note Trump’s shifting narrative, as he now admits it is “hard to bring things down once they’re up.”
Supporters, however, downplayed price hikes, suggesting cheaper alternatives like instant coffee.
There are only 3 ways to lower(that came to my mind) prices in a quick way.
1: Abandon regulations. If corporations don’t have to invest into safety, ecology and such stuff they have lower production costs which can mean lower prices.
2: More competition. If corporations have to compete with each other they usually start a battle over who gets the best quality for the lowest price.
3: Subsidies. Nothing to say here I guess.
Edit: Point one and three lower production costs. As others have already pointed out, these dont mean lower prices, but more profit for companys
4 - Reduce Profit Margin.
Corporate has dispatched a kill team to your location.
I think corporations have pretty clearly demonstrated an unwillingness to pass savings in their production chain on to the consumer. For example, very few items have gone back down to their pre-pandemic price point, even though scarcity and supply chain issues from COVID have largely resolved.
Corporations don’t willingly give up money. In circumstances like 1 and 3 they’ll more likely just say “thanks for making line go up more” lol. COVID imposed some supply issues that I would assume are mostly mitigated by now, but I haven’t seen costs decrease, only increase–so now we have record profits in many contexts. Subsidies can sometimes help, but it seems to me that the most effective subsidies (in terms of lowering cost) are those with significant, more powerful corporate players downstream (e.g., corn in the US) rather than those purchased by individual consumers who have comparatively little power.
I don’t know that 2 is necessarily quick, but competition can indeed lower prices if a competitor can actually survive against the behemoths in their respective markets. In those instances, corporations can try to shape regulation to squash the upstarts while leaving the big players alone.
I’m not sure that government really has the ability to lower prices in a way that isn’t somehow perverted by large corporate entities given the power they have.
Youre right. I forgot that companies will likely not lower the prices.
Nationalize the companies involved in production and distribution and eliminate profit, making and selling everything at-cost also works.
There’s too much evidence all over the world that point 1 would never work. If deregulation relieve then from certain costs, they’ll happily enjoy higher profits. 🤷
Secret option 4: general strike. Pay us more, charge less, or we’ll eat the wealthy before we go hungry.
May 1st. 2028. We all walk out together.