You can't gaslight food affordability

Lots of folk who love the Marx Brothers think it was Groucho who famously said in “Duck Soup,” “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

But it wasn’t Groucho. In a delicious irony it was Chico dressed as Groucho leaving Margaret Dumont to ponder what she thinks she saw.

“Duck Soup” reminds me of the President of the United States, who has largely built his political career on a house of cards — imploring the Make America Great Again movement to believe him and not their own eyes.

The great mind-bender-in-chief claimed he could fix the economy on day one of a return to the White House with a “drill, baby, drill” strategy to increase oil production. On the campaign trail, POTUS assured the public he was the solution for higher prices.

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. And agriculture has been taking it on the chin.

Future Prices are down, input costs are up. U.S. farmers can certainly believe their eyes that 2026 is shaping up to be a difficult year with input costs remaining painfully high and earnings unlikely to rally much from 2025 levels.
Beef prices are projected to increase further in 2026. Drought conditions in cattle country have decimated U.S. herds. With less cattle to go around it isn’t at all surprising that retail beef prices are moving through the roof. U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics pegged November 2025 ground beef prices at $6.54 a pound. Price increases have been cushioned by Brazil beef imports, but that supply is drying up fast. U.S grocery shoppers are having no problem believing their eyes at the checkout line.
Restaurants face the threat of lost sales. The latest Consumer Price Index shows eating out is 3.7% higher than a year ago. Establishments dealing in steaks are walking a fine line — raise prices too high and risk driving away patrons. By and large, diners are still stepping up to the steak plate. But there are signs of lower profits at mid-priced steak houses like Outback.

And then there are soybeans. The POTUS’ use of tariffs against China decimated soybean farmers in 2025. China didn’t purchase a single US soybean from January to October.

By and large, China filled its soybean needs from Brazil and Argentina. Finally, at the very end of October, China pledged to buy at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by March, and has now done so.

The White House is now giving U.S. farmers $12 billion to cover 2025 losses due to the tariff war.

But the money is inadequate. The American Soybean Association says $30.88 an acre falls far short from covering “significant financial damage soybean farmers sustained this year due to the high cost of production and losses sustained during the China trade war.” Farmers are already asking for even more bail-out money.

And what trade war concessions did the White House get from China for U.S. soybean farmers for the 2026 growing season and beyond? Nothing. China pinky swears says it will purchase at least 25 million metric tons each year through 2028. That sounds great … except between 2020 and 2024 China purchased an annual average of 29 million metric tons of soybeans. That’s not much of a trade deal. And of course China doesn’t need to keep its word.

Ask a soybean farmer if they can A-F-F-O-R-D planting soybeans in 2026 and you will get a ear full.

Meanwhile, the White House has been talking out of both sides of its mouth, alternating between affordability is a Democrat hoax and good times are just around the corner.

It’s rather pathetic. In rolling out USDA’s new food pyramid, Secretary Brooke Rollins managed to be both condescending and tone deaf about food affordability by suggesting the public could eat a healthy meal for just 3 dollars consisting of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, uh you know a corn tortilla, and one other thing. And so there is a way to do this that will actually save the average American consumer money.”

See! Just $9 a day, $63 a week, $252 dollars a month. So affordable. Uh no.

Democrats across the nation are climbing aboard the affordability bandwagon. And even Republican-friendly news outlets are reporting the reality that the American public feels they are falling financially behind.

To date, the public hasn’t been swayed by White House attempts to tamp down all that food affordability talk. Tariff reductions on cocoa, coffee and bananas, creating a task force to root out price-fixing in the food supply chain, and encouraging McDonalds to lower the cost of buying a value meal haven’t altered public opinion.

Not to mention the idea of sending Americans a $2 thousand tariff rebate check.

Food affordability boils down to one simple thing. How much did my groceries cost? The Bureau of Labor Statistics says prices are higher in five of six tracked food-at-home categories. And no amount of White House gaslighting is going to change that.

Who ya going to believe, me or your own eyes? When it comes to food prices I think we all know the answer to that one.