Wicked Grocer

President-elect Donald Trump successfully campaigned on lowering prices, particularly in supermarkets. But this may prove impossible to achieve if he is to keep his other big promise: the mass expulsion of millions of immigrants.

As farmers and economists warn, implementing this brutal policy would almost certainly cause food prices to skyrocket, CNN reports.

The sad truth is that America’s agricultural industry relies heavily on labor performed by undocumented immigrants, who are vulnerable to exploitation.

Beyond the big moral questions, from a purely economic point of view, the consequences of the scale of the deportations promised by Trump are clear. With a shortage of labor, less food will be produced. And that means higher grocery prices.

“There is no doubt that the mass expulsion of immigrants will disrupt the agriculture and food processing sectors, leading to severe labor shortages, higher costs and therefore higher prices for a wide variety of food products,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. CNN. “The only question is how high prices will go.”

Job search

According to statistics According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, between 2018 and 2020, 41 percent of all agricultural workers in the country were unauthorized immigrants. Only 36 percent were U.S. citizens, the rest being legal immigrants. In this sector of activity, domestic workers are approximately twice as numerous as foreign-born workers.

Overall, in 2021, approximately 300,000 undocumented immigrants worked in the agricultural sector. On this scale, closing the labor gap is a pipe dream. It’s not just the volume that’s the problem; it’s that people born here aren’t exactly lining up to do the most back-breaking work imaginable. Just ask the people who run the farms.

“No domestic worker wants these jobs,” said Fred Leitz, owner of a family farm in Michigan. CNN. “It’s seasonal. It’s outside. It’s hot. It’s cold.”

“It’s a demanding job. It’s dirty at times. Physical in nature,” echoed Rick Naerobout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association. “And when you’re faced with unemployment rates as low as we are, your national workforce kind of has a choice in what jobs they want to do.”

Food for thought

According to Naerebout, up to 90 percent of the dairy industry is made up of immigrants – so the (raw) dairy products that right-wing crooks are obsessed with pushing would probably be the first to suffer.

“The impact for you, at the supermarket, would be a significant (price) increase in milk, cheese and yogurt,” Naerbout said. CNN.

That being said, it could be that Trump’s deportations don’t go as far as he claims. Another big promise, its proposed overall prices plus a ridiculous Customs duties of 60% on Chinese productsdoes not seem to be taken seriously by an optimistic Wall Streetwho would suffer directly from such a policy.

In any case, there will be many political obstacles to achieving these goals. But if the agricultural sector’s alarm is to be believed, even a softened version of Trump’s vision could have disastrous consequences for the economy.

Read more about Trump: Trump reportedly intends to give free rein to self-driving cars