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?

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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.

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Source: The Poultry Site, 13 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.

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