Donald Trump promised to reduce food prices as soon as he took office, but 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 scathing letter.
The letter, addressed to Trump, accuses the president of backtracking on a campaign promise to reduce grocery bills starting on the first day of his term.
“During your campaign, you repeatedly promised that you would lower food prices ‘immediately’ if you were elected president,” reads the letter, which was sent to Trump on Sunday night and first shared with NBC News. “But during his first week in office he has focused instead on mass deportations and pardoning the January 6 attackers.”
Trump made inflation and food costs a hallmark of his campaign for a second presidential term, displaying everything from a small box of Tic Tacs at a rally in North Carolina to entire tables full of groceries outside his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to expressing his commitment to reducing voters’ grocery bills.
But the dozens 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 for a total of 20 Democrats.
“His only action on costs was an executive order that contained only the slightest mention of food prices, and not a single specific policy to reduce them,” they wrote, citing a Trump administration memo pledging to help with the cost of food for Americans. live by eliminating “harmful and coercive ‘climate’ policies that raise food and fuel costs.”
The Trump administration had no immediate comment on the letter, which comes as food prices continue to rise. Data from the Department of Labor shows that the cost of food increased 1.8% between December 2023 and December 2024. Eggs saw the largest price increase, increasing 36.8% during the same period, largely part due to a bird flu crisis that has killed millions of poultry.
The Democratic lawmakers warned in the letter that companies “often take advantage of crises such as pandemics and bird flu outbreaks as an opportunity to raise prices beyond what is necessary to cover rising costs.”
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 not yet advanced.
In May, he sent a letter to then-President Joe Biden imploring his administration to reduce food costs through better federal enforcement of price gouging.
Speaking to NBC News, Warren and McGovern criticized Trump for how he spent his first week in office.
“If Donald Trump really wants to work to lower grocery prices, he should work hard, use these tools to lower egg prices, and deliver on his promises,” Warren said.
McGovern added that Trump “has done nothing to lower food prices or help working people struggling to put food on the table.”
“We are willing to work with him to achieve results, not just empty rhetoric,” he said.
About 9 in 10 voters were somewhat or very concerned about the cost of food, the letter to Trump said.
“Yet instead of working to reduce his grocery bills, he has used the first week of his administration to try to end birthright citizenship, pardon the people who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, and change the name of 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 issues: immigration and food affordability.
“I won on the border and I won in groceries,” he said.
But later in December, he admitted that cutting grocery bills would be “very difficult.”
“It’s hard to tear things down once they’re up,” he told Time magazine.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, said the president’s first step should be to put an end to powerful corporations that have price gouged families in recent years.
“Families expect President Trump to keep his promises. “It would be wise to use the FTC and other agencies to promote competition, invest in supply chains, and crack down on pricing tactics, such as price surveillance, that drive up food and grocery prices,” Owens said in a statement to NBC News. “But if his first set of executive orders are any indication, he is setting himself up for failure.”
