Donald Trump vowed to slash grocery prices as soon as he took office, yet he has barely addressed the cost of food in the whirlwind of executive orders he signed in his first week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic lawmakers wrote in a searing letter.
The letter, addressed to Trump, accuses the president of backtracking on a campaign promise to lower supermarket bills starting on Day 1 of his term.
“During your campaign, you repeatedly promised you would lower food prices ‘immediately’ if elected president,” read the letter, which was sent to Trump on Sunday evening and shared first with NBC News. “But during your first week of office you have instead focused on mass deportations and pardoning January 6 attackers.”
Trump made inflation and the cost of food a hallmark of his run for a second presidential term, displaying everything from a teeny box of Tic Tacs at a rally in North Carolina to entire tables full of groceries outside his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club to express his commitment to lowering voters’ grocery bills.
But the scores of executive orders Trump has signed since Inauguration Day only briefly touch on food, Warren, D-Mass., said in the letter, which was co-written by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and signed by a total of 20 Democrats.
“Your sole action on costs was an executive order that contained only the barest mention of food prices, and not a single specific policy to reduce them,” they wrote, citing a Trump administration memo that commits to helping with Americans’ cost of living by eliminating “harmful, coercive ‘climate’ policies driving up the costs of food and fuel.”
The letter comes as food prices continue to rise. Labor Department data shows that the cost of groceries rose 1.8% from December 2023 to December 2024. Eggs saw the biggest price jump, increasing 36.8% during the same time frame in large part due to a bird flu crisis that has killed millions of poultry.
The Democratic lawmakers warned in the letter that companies “often exploit crises like pandemics and avian flu outbreaks as an opportunity to raise prices beyond what is needed to cover rising costs.”
In response to the letter, the Trump administration said in a statement that it was already working to lower the cost of living for families.
“President Trump immediately took action on day one to unleash American energy, which will drive down costs for families across the country," said Anna Kelly, the deputy White House press secretary. "He has already ended the failed economic policies of the past four years that skyrocketed inflation, which were rubber-stamped by Elizabeth Warren.”
Warren has long advocated on behalf of consumers. Last year, she and others introduced a bill that would make it illegal to sell goods or services at a “grossly excessive price” — a term that would be defined by the Federal Trade Commission. The bill has yet to advance.
In May, she sent a letter to then-President Joe Biden imploring his administration to lower food costs through better federal enforcement of price manipulation.
In statements to NBC News, Warren and McGovern excoriated Trump for how he spent his first week in office.
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“If Donald Trump is serious about working to lower grocery prices, he should buckle down, pick up these tools to lower egg prices and deliver on his promises,” Warren said.
McGovern added that Trump “hasn’t done a damn thing to lower food prices or help the hardworking people struggling to put food on the table.”
“We are ready to work with him to actually deliver results, not just empty rhetoric,” he said.
About 9 in 10 voters were somewhat or very concerned about the cost of groceries, the letter to Trump pointed out.
“Instead of working to lower their grocery bills however, you have used the first week of your administration on attempting to end birthright citizenship, pardoning individuals who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and renaming a mountain,” the letter said.
Trump told NBC News’ Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” last month that his Election Day victory came down to two subjects: immigration and the affordability of food.
“I won on the border, and I won on groceries,” he said.
But later in December, he conceded that lowering grocery bills would be “very hard.”
“It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” he told Time magazine.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, said putting a stop to powerful corporations that have price-gouged families in recent years should be the president’s first step.
“Families expect President Trump to make good on his promises. He would be wise to use the FTC and other agencies to promote competition, invest in supply chains, and crack down on pricing tactics like surveillance pricing, that drive up food and grocery prices,” Owens said in a statement to NBC News. “But if his first slate of executive orders is any indication, he’s positioning himself to fail.”
