Anger at high grocery prices may help reelect Donald Trump. Is corporate greed to blame?
by Jerusalem Demsas
The Atlantic
If former President Donald Trump wins next week’s election, perhaps no issue will have been more pivotal than inflation. Earlier this year, Gallup polling showed that the number of Americans who worry “a great deal” about inflation was larger than the number worried about crime, homelessness, health care, immigration, and even Social Security.
And the anger has perhaps been fiercest over the cost of groceries. People buy groceries regularly, and unlike other goods, food is a necessity—you can’t simply opt out of food because prices have gotten too high, the way you might wait out buying a car or a couch. At their recent peak, in August 2022, grocery prices had increased 14 percent since the previous year. Although inflation has cooled significantly since then, that doesn’t mean prices have actually gone down; it just means prices have stopped rising as dramatically.