When it comes to the price of bacon, Donald Trump is absolutely right: It’s too damn high. What he doesn’t tell you when he brings this up on the campaign trail — which is a lot — is that the sharp increase was headed our way while he was in the White House.
In 2018, 61% of California voters passed Proposition 12, which required the space for breeding pigs and their piglets to be increased to a new standard — which only 4% of pork suppliers met at the time. Essentially the industry had to choose between spending money to meet the new requirements or risking losing the nation’s most populous state as a customer.
The industry challenged the constitutionality of the new law. In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in California’s favor, and the law took full effect a bit over a year ago. Two of the justices in favor were selected by Trump.
“While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote.
California’s law is not the only factor that has made bacon more expensive. There’s also Trump’s initial handling of the pandemic.
On Feb. 7, 2020, after speaking with the president of China, Trump was interviewed by journalist Bob Woodward. On the recording the former president said: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch — you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air. That’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your — you know, your — even your strenuous flu.”
Yet on Feb. 10, he told the country “a lot of people think that goes away in April.”
By “that” he meant COVID-19.
On March 30, he doubled down: “Stay calm. It will go away.”
He later told Woodward: “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
This wishful thinking was not an effective containment strategy.
In April 2020, Tyson and Smithfield — two of the largest meat processors in the country — were forced to shut down plants because their employees were getting sick.
As late as Aug. 31 that year, Trump was still telling the country: “It’s going to go away.” (Update from four years later: It hasn’t gone away.)
But in 2020, thousands of people were dying daily, the supply chain was at a standstill and tens of thousands of pigs were being euthanized because of the plant closures. When do you ever see big businesses just eat a loss of revenue? We know it’s usually passed on to the customer, unless competition is keeping prices reasonable. When Proposition 12 passed in 2018, 70% of the market was controlled by four hog processing companies.
And so like clockwork, in January 2021 the average cost for a pound of bacon was $5.83, and by October it was $7.31. Consumers noticed. In trying to reach voters struggling to make ends meet, Trump has focused on the cost of bacon as the anecdote to use when attacking Biden’s economic policies. He couldn’t have chosen a worse example to make his case: The price of a BLT was destined to jump around now regardless of whether Trump or President Biden were in office. And it was Trump’s own handling of the pandemic that exacerbated the issues surrounding the cost of bacon.
In April 2020, House Democrats introduced the Price Gouging Prevention Act to try to stop corporate America from taking advantage of the pandemic to raise profits, but Trump was still telling the country “this is going to go away.” The bill went nowhere, because of Republican opposition. Even though Senate Democrats — including then-Sen. Kamala Harris — sponsored a companion bill to match the House initiative.
We saw the same script with gas prices. In 2022, House Democrats passed a gas price gouging bill. Republicans in the Senate wouldn’t get on board to solve the problem facing consumers; they wanted to ensure that Trump could campaign by complaining about gas prices.
So much for “America first,” right?
It’s quite telling that Trump felt misleading voters about the pandemic was a better campaign strategy than winning voters over by leading us through it. During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris warned the nation that Trump is not a serious man but that reelecting him would have serious consequences. His rhetoric around the price of bacon is the perfect illustration.
In March 2020, Trump himself issued an executive order intended to prevent price gouging. Today he characterizes Harris’ call for a national price gouging ban as “communist,” even though 37 states — including ones that voted for him in 2016 and 2020 — already have similar bans. Trump likes to complain about current-day America as if he’s a fresh face with a new vision, but he does have a record we can refer to. In January 2017, bacon was $5.18 a pound. That September, while Trump was issuing “Citizenship Day” proclamations, the price of bacon reached a then-record $6.36, and surprisingly, he didn’t fault the White House.
That’s because pointing out the cost of bacon wouldn’t have been a good look for him then. When you look at the facts today, they don’t look good for him now either.
