Get ready for higher food prices

When Americans went to the polls last week, they said: wanted to eat cheaper. Groceries are really more expensive than in the past, and the cost of groceries is the measure of how much Americans understand the state of the economy as a whole. Pew Research Center reported this in September three quarters of Americans were “very concerned” about them. And this month, many of those people voted for Donald Trump, the candidate who expressed his distance from the economic policies of the past four years, and who promised repeatedly to lower prices.

But two of Trump’s other big promises — mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and more restrictive trade rules — would almost certainly raise food prices, economists told me. American-grown staples would become more expensive due to a domestic labor shortage, and so would imported foods, as they would be subject to double-digit import taxes. This cause-and-effect dynamic “could be my final exam,” Rachel Friedberg, who teaches Principles of Economics at Brown University, told me. “It’s just very simple principles of economics.”

The main problem is labor. American agriculture depends on undocumented workers; if the Trump administration were to act on “the largest deportation operation in American history‘ and deport every undocumented immigrant living in the United States, somewhere in between 40 And 50 percent of the people who plant our crops and pick our fruit would leave the domestic workforce. Immigration enforcement advocates typically say these jobs can be filled by documented or American-born workers. But the agricultural sector is already in a protracted situation labor crisisand undocumented immigrants are often willing to work for less money – which is why employers hire them even though it is illegal. Fewer workers means higher wages mean higher prices, straight up.

Read: Trump indicates that he is taking mass deportation seriously

Some farms might be able to survive for a short time. Some may be quicker to embrace the technology and invest in automated systems that can help fill the employment gap. But that would take time, and as David Anderson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University, told me, “You have to get the cows milked and fed every day.” The American agricultural system depends on hands and feet, arms and legs, day in and day out.

If the Trump administration does indeed deport millions of people, manufacturing prices would likely rise the most, Bradley Rickard, an agricultural economist at Cornell University, told me in an email, because “labor represents a significant portion of total costs.” Prices would likely rise fastest and most dramatically for the crops that are the most labor-intensive to harvest: strawberries, mushrooms, asparagus, cherries. That includes the food grown in California grows three-quarters of fruits and nuts, and a third of vegetables, are produced domestically and are home-grown about half of the country’s undocumented agricultural workers.

Mass deportations would also drive up prices for dairy and meat, whose industries have also faced labor shortages for at least half a decade. According to one Analysis 2022 According to the American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigrants and helps shape immigration policy, a shortage of workers has caused average wages in the dairy and meat sectors to rise 33.7 percent between 2019 and 2022, and prices have increased between 4.5 and 7 percent. In 2015, Anderson and several colleagues conducted a study on behalf of the dairy industry found that eliminating immigrants from the industry would reduce production, put farms out of business and cause milk prices to rise by about 90 percent.

Anderson’s research is ten years old and assumes a total loss of all migrant workers, both documented and undocumented. Last week he told me that he has no reason to believe that the dynamic would not continue to a lesser extent if a smaller share of the working population were now deported. “We couldn’t produce all the things we do today. Less production means less supply,” he said, “and less supply means food prices will rise.”

Immigration policies impact food grown domestically. But about 15 percent of the US food supply is imported, including approx 60 percent of fresh fruit, 80 percent of seafood, 90 percent of avocados, and 99 percent of coffee. Our dependence on or taste for imported goods is checked steadily over the past decades, as we have become accustomed to Italian olive oil and raspberries in winter. During his campaign, Trump proposed taxing these – and all – imported goods in an effort to increase domestic production and reduce the deficit. If his plan goes ahead, there will be Chinese imports, including large quantities of the fish, seafood, garlic, spices, tea and apple juice we consume – would be subject to tariffs of 60 to 100 percent. All other imports would be subject to Rates from 10 to 20 percent. Those taxes would do that are passed on to the consumerespecially in the short term, as domestic production increases (if it can increase), and especially as undocumented immigrants leave the labor force at the same time. “There is no safety valve,” Marcus Noland, the executive vice president and director of studies at the nonpartisan think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics, told me. “If you’re going to deport people, it’s not like you can import the product and make up for it if you have these tariffs.”

Read: The Immigration Wage Myth

We all need food to live, and all food has to come from somewhere. The process by which it gets to our plates is complicated, resource-intensive and subject to the vagaries of policy, weather, disease and labor supply. There is not a large amount of slack built into the system. If sticker-shocked milk fans turn to other drinks, those prices will rise too. If the California berry industry comes under pressure from labor shortages, and the market for imported berries comes under pressure from tariffs, berries will become more expensive.

And while farms are the largest employers of undocumented workers, these workers also make up a large share of employment mechanism That processes, butchers, cooksAnd supplies our food, from the vast poultry processing plants of the South to the local fried chicken. The restaurant industry – which one employs According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, there are already more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants have difficulty filling vacancieswho drives higher prices; even a small workforce reduction would increase operating costs, almost certainly resulting in restaurants closing or costs being passed on to diners.

In other words, immigration and tariff policies would affect all the food we eat: snacksschool lunches, lattes, pet foodfast food, fancy restaurant dinners. People won’t stop eating when food becomes more expensive; they’ll just spend more money on it.

Trump’s team proposed deportations and tariffs as a way to fix the inflation-ravaged US economy. But voters are unlikely to be comforted by what they will see in the coming years. Towards the end of our phone conversation, I asked Friedberg if she saw a scenario in which, if the new administration’s policies are implemented, prices do not rise. “No,” she said without pausing. “I am confident that food will become more expensive. Buy those frozen vegetables now.”