Trump will not be president for another two months but he is already dominating the Washington agenda again. This week a flurry of controversial and extremist picks for his cabinet and other high-ranking administration positions came at a hectic pace and with a level of provocation that made heads spin.
The choices included a Fox News host, a tech billionaire, an anti-vaccine activist, an alleged apologist for Russia’s Vladimir Putin and a congressman once embroiled in a sex-trafficking investigation. The lineup raised fears of authoritarianism or chaos – or both – once Trump and his allies are back in the Oval Office.
Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Their entire political brand is shock and awe. Prior to Trump’s re-election it was notional. Now they have the power to execute all of their depravity with the full backing of American government power virtually unchecked. I don’t think the people who voted for Donald Trump, allegedly because of economic angst, have a full appreciation for what that means.”
Short answer: yes, maybe not $30/dozen and maybe not instantly but probably quickly.
Mechanized farming requires mechanized parts and transportation, even if domestic supply lines exist, the global market supply contributes to price. If that global market is heavily resricted through tariffs, price increases will propagate throughout the system.
The sudden and massive tariffs like trump has suggested (60% on all chinese goods, and 10% on all import goods) could be enough to spur a general global economic collapse. That is a huge amount of extra friction on a system tuned to extract maximum profit rather than be resilient, and we saw with the covid supply shocks how a string of comparatively local and sporadic events were able to wreck havoc.