The Right Way to Deal With Election Stress

What would happen if all those workers suddenly disappeared? Replacing them, Garza and Horn-Muller report, wouldn’t be easy, since U.S. workers often don’t find these jobs appealing. The shock to the system would likely drive a spike in food prices. And even if mass deportation policies didn’t survive legal challenges, the “chilling effect” of the threat could still disrupt the industry—and harm a lot of people.

Tariffs could also send food prices skyrocketing. While both parties have proposed strikingly high tariffs in recent years, the ones Trump has proposed recently are much broader than the Biden administration’s (already pretty extreme) 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. Trump, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and David J. Lynch note, has “floated ‘automatic’ tariffs of 10 percent to 20 percent on every U.S. trading partner, 60 percent levies on goods from China, and rates as high as 100, 200 or even 1,000 percent in other circumstances.” Even if these were “only partially implemented,” Stein and Lynch write, “the consequences would be far-reaching: Americans would be hit by higher prices for grocery staples from abroad, such as fruit, vegetables and coffee.” If you’re looking for specifics, the reporters point to one estimate that 90 percent of tomatoes sold in the U.S. are imported.

The policies in Project 2025—a playbook for the next Republican president written by conservative thinkers and former Trump administration officials, which Trump has tried (unsuccessfully) to distance himself from—go further still. It proposes getting rid of dietary guidelines, which “form the basis for all federal food policies, from school meals to SNAP, WIC and other programs,” Cecilia Nowell reports for The Guardian this week. Project 2025 also proposes changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the additional program for Women, Infants and Children that would likely reduce such assistance, by reinstituting work requirements and restricting eligibility. With regard to WIC, Project 2025 suggests changing the bidding and contracting process for baby formula and having the president “re-evaluate excessive regulation” of baby formula, which Project 2025 blames for formula shortages. (In 2022, contaminated baby formula led to widespread recalls and multiple infant deaths.)