Couponing, comparison shopping and cutting back on favorite foods are new habits for her and millions of other Americans as they absorb the biggest jump in grocery prices in a half-century. Buying food to eat at home has gotten 33% more expensive in U.S. cities since the beginning of 2019, according to government figures. In the 7 1/2 years before that, prices rose 6.4%.
The historic increase happened for numerous reasons. The coronavirus pandemic snarled supply chains and raised labor and transportation costs. Droughts, hurricanes and diseases like bird flu drove down production. Tariffs raised prices on foreign products like coffee, tomatoes and chocolate. Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine disrupted oil and fertilizer supplies.
I wonder how much that is due to the usa president burning all possible bridges with trading partners.
And threatening them.
I mean the USA has lived off of the petro dollar for quite some time, and it smells like the end of free money from the rest of the world is starting to happen.
It’s a solid point.
A year ago I was beating the drum about how new trade deals take 1-2 years in order to take effect, and after Donald’s unilateral tariffs and ‘Liberation Day’, US economic policy was basically a time bomb. The coming years are going to be very hard on us and everyone else.
Worse even, as we held the USA in such high regards we’d “let them” do basically anything without repercussions because we wanted to be peaceful (and we became lazy). That time is never going to come back.
So, welcome to the normal world I guess!