As you’re reading this, you are likely either finished with any last-minute Thanksgiving shopping or bracing yourself to get it done. The good news is that as inflation has eased, stocking up on ingredients for your spread is less painful than it was two years ago. In fact, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, Thanksgiving prices have dropped to one of the lowest levels in years when adjusted for inflation.
Unfortunately, you might want to savor that feeling like it’s the perfect bite off your fully loaded plate. President-elect Donald Trump won in part on his promise to stop inflation and bring down prices. The problem though is that he’s coming in hot with plans to raise tariffs on most imports, enact a massive deportation sweep and otherwise put America’s food supply at risk. If he succeeds in pushing through his most damaging policies, next year’s Thanksgiving table could be looking a lot different.
If he succeeds in pushing through his most damaging policies, next year’s Thanksgiving table could be looking a lot different.
There are still eight weeks before Trump reclaims the White House, but he’s already announcing major policy shifts. He posted Monday night that on his first day in office he’d sign an executive order adding a 25% tariff on all products coming into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada. Trump framed it as a response to the number of border crossings (which has plummeted over the last year) and fentanyl coming into America (mostly via American citizens).
But that’s just the tip of the carving knife: Trump said during the presidential campaign that he wants a blanket 10% tariff on all goods entering the United States. For years now he has insisted that tariffs are a net positive, as the country where the item originated pays the government-imposed fee to have it accepted through U.S. customs. The reality is that it’s the companies that are importing the products or raw materials that pay. In turn, they raise prices for consumers to cover the difference rather than lose out on profits.
The effect on the produce in your local grocery stores is likely to be massive. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans imported $9 billion of vegetables alone from Mexico in 2023. We brought in another $11 billion in fruits from Mexico and $5 billion in vegetables from Canada in that same year. And while the tariffs on the rest of Latin America would theoretically be lower under Trump’s blanket 10% policy, that’s another roughly $12 billion in produce from them as well that came into the country in 2023. That adds up to several billions of dollars in tariffs that someone is gonna need to pay for — and it’s probably going to be consumers.
You may be thinking that given how many traditional Thanksgiving foods are American and grown domestically, their prices might not be as heavily affected. I would remind you then about Trump’s other major policy priority: immigration. And the effect of his promised deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants will likely be an outsize impact on America’s food supply.
According to a 2021 analysis from the Center for American Progress, there are an estimated 1.7 million undocumented immigrants who work in the American food supply chain. Even if those workers aren’t all swept up in the raids Trump has pledged, the threat may be enough to keep the roughly 42% of crop farmworkers who don’t hold work authorizations from being keen to gather produce. What we may likely see is a nationwide repeat of Alabama farmers’ plight after that state passed a stringent immigration law in 2011 and crops were left rotting in the fields.
Even under the best-case scenario here, food prices are still set to rise.
Even under the best-case scenario here, food prices are still set to rise. Many Alabama farmers have turned to the H-2A visa program, which allows them to hire migrants for up to 10 months. The program sets a federal floor on how much farmers can pay these farmhands and requires them to provide housing and pay for travel to and from the workers’ home country. That’s all much more expensive than exploiting cheap labor from undocumented migrants, and agricultural groups are already nervous about how Trump’s crackdown might affect their bottom line.
There’s also one less obvious factor that might prompt a jump in Thanksgiving costs next year: public health. Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services, a role that also includes overseeing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. In other words, he’s set to be a point person in preparing for a pandemic and with his bias against infectious disease research, it seems unlikely that he’ll be great at halting the potential public health emergency that’s been quietly brewing over the last year.
Scientists and government officials have spent the last two years nervously watching H5N1, a potent strain of the avian influenza, or bird flu. There are only a few recorded transmissions of the virus to humans in the U.S., but it’s killed over 100 million birds here since 2022. We’re seeing egg prices continue to rise across the country year-over-year compared with all other food prices, as a consequence of the virus’s spread. Kennedy will be tasked with working with the USDA to halt the spread of bird flu to other areas of farming, including the recent infection of dairy cows. Failure to do so could see the cost of not just turkey and other poultry, but milks and cheeses go through the roof if a major outbreak were to cross over.
There’s still a chance that Trump will be prevented from putting some of these policies into place. But it still pays to be thankful now for the food that’s readily available in markets. And, you know, maybe it would behoove you to stock up on nonperishables and things that will last in your freezer from overseas for Thanksgiving next year.