Tag: food prices
Late Night Exposes Trump's Mad Tariff Plan As Mainstream Outlets Fail

Late Night Exposes Trump's Mad Tariff Plan As Mainstream Outlets Fail

A week after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proposed restricting food imports when asked how he’d lower the cost of food and groceries, many major newspapers, newswires, and broadcast news programs continue to ignore his proposal, which would lead to higher food prices for American consumers. And while broadcast news programs failed to report on the question and Trump’s long, rambling response, NBC late night host Seth Meyers and CBS late night host Stephen Colbert both highlighted Trump’s incoherence.

During a September 17 town hall in Flint, Michigan, an audience member asked Trump how he would “bring down the cost of food and groceries.” After Trump rambled about unrelated energy prices and Federal Reserve interest rates, he responded:

“We gotta work with our farmers. Our farmers are being decimated right now. They’re being absolutely, absolutely decimated. And you know, one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country. We’re gonna have to be a little bit like other countries. We’re not gonna allow so much come — we’re gonna let our farmers go to work.”

Media Matters noted previously that several economists explained that Trump’s proposal would raise food prices, not lower them.

Some national news outlets, including Axios, noted that “Trump’s vow to lower grocery costs will backfire,” and writing in The Atlantic, the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome and Sophia Bagley described the folly of “Trump’s deranged plan to lower food prices by raising them.” MSNBC prime-time host Chris Hayes also mentioned Trump’s response to the food price question.

But many of the most prominent and influential major news organizations in the country failed to cover Trump’s comments at all.

Factiva searches turned up no coverage at all from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Reuters between September 17 and noon on September 24.

A SnapStream search of the same time frame also turned up no coverage from the broadcast morning and evening news programming of ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS, along with the corporate networks’ Sunday political talk shows.

Instead, CBS’ Evening News and PBS' NewsHour covered Trump’s farming-focused September 23 event in Pennsylvania, during which he threatened farm equipment manufacturer John Deere with 200% tariffs.

NBC’s Nightly News and Today covered Trump’s prearranged visit to a Pennsylvania grocery store the same day, where he gave $100 to a potential voter as a campaign stunt (a possible federal crime).

And The Associated Press reported on both September 23 events. These reports, however, failed to mention Trump’s incoherent answer on food prices from the previous week, even though he specifically mentioned that he would restrict imports of “farm product.”

Meanwhile, two of these networks’ late night comedy shows did cover his rambling response.

Both NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and CBS’ Late Night with Stephen Colbert drew attention to the incoherent nature of Trump attempting, and failing, to explain how he would lower food prices, while their networks’ news programs ignored it.

Seth Meyers even helpfully contextualized the actual reason that grocery prices spiked in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting both the incoherence of Trump's rambling response and the ease with which a news network could have informed its viewers about the topic.

Methodology

Media Matters searched print articles in the Factiva database from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Reuters for any of the terms “Trump,” “former president,” “nominee,” or “candidate” within the same headline or paragraphs as any of the terms “food,” “energy,” “interest” or “rate” or any variation of either of the terms “grocery” or “farmer” from September 17, 2024, when GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump answered a question about how he would lower food prices during a Michigan town hall, through noon on September 24, 2024.

We also searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original episodes of ABC's Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS' Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; NBC's Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press; and PBS’ NewsHour for for any of the terms “Trump,” “former president,” “nominee,” or “candidate” within close proximity of any of the terms “food,” “energy,” “interest” or “rate” or any variation of either of the terms “grocery” or “farmer” from September 17, 2024, through noon on September 24, 2024.

We included articles, which we defined as instances when Trump’s comments responding to a question about lowering the cost of food were mentioned in the headline or lead paragraphs in any section of the newspaper or newswire.

We also included segments, which we defined as instances when Trump’s comments responding to a question about lowering the cost of food were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the comments. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the comments with one another.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Corporate Profiteers Are Killing America’s Family Farms

Corporate Profiteers Are Killing America’s Family Farms

A massive depression has been building for years across our vast rural expanse, but don’t feel alone if you didn’t know, for most of our media and political establishments have failed to notice, much less inform the general public. In America’s power centers, farming is almost entirely ignored as something arcane and “out there” — and out of mind. In 1960, John F. Kennedy lightly summed up this attitude: “I don’t want to hear about agriculture from anyone but you,” the urbane president reputedly told Orville Freeman when appointing him Secretary of Agriculture. “Come to think of it, I don’t want to hear about it from you, either.”

But hear about it we must, and do something we must. Today’s crisis promises not only to devastate our country’s rural economy and culture but also to enter our kitchens and bite us on the butt. Today’s catastrophe is far more desperate than outsiders know — and is caused by another perfect storm of corporate monopolization, financial manipulation, and rigged ag policies. How severe is the storm? Start with one eye-popping indicator: The 2018 median farm income for U.S. farm households was minus $1,553! (“Net farm income” is the money left over after a farm family subtracts the cost of producing their crops from the amount they get paid for them.) You can’t pay for groceries, rent, medical bills, kids’ clothing, a trip to Disneyland, etc. on negative income. And $1,553 in debt is the “median,” meaning that half of America’s farm families went even deeper into the hole.

Such hardship is not a one-time blip. For six straight years, more than half of America’s ag producers have lost money on their crops and herds, and this year promises more of the same. Thus, to keep the farm afloat and make ends meet, farmers commonly work a part-time side job and have a spouse who commutes to a full-time city job. With typical dark humor, they refer to these off-farm jobs as the cost of supporting their “farming habit.” Indeed, today’s ag economy is so bleak that about 70 percent of the total income of U.S. farm families comes from their “secondary jobs.”

Are these farmers inept, outmoded, lazy? Au contraire, as we say in Texas: They’re industrious, efficient, productive, innovative … and broke. Indeed, the most worrisome thing for our society is that the operations being eliminated are the mid-sized family farms — the essential backbone of both an economically healthy food system and vibrant rural communities.

But if they’re good farmers, why are they going broke? Because corporate middlemen, commodity speculators, and government policy have intentionally perverted the structure of the U.S. ag economy to leave producers with practically no say over the price of their cotton, wheat, milk, and chickens. Pious right-wing ideology aside, farmers don’t become financial “winners” just by working hard and smart, outfoxing the pests, lucking out on the weather and producing an abundant, top-quality harvest. When they take their crops to market, even blue-ribbon producers face a take-it-or-leave-it price set by profiteering players they never see.

For the past several years, prices have crashed. Dairy farmers, for example, are in the fourth consecutive year of incomes below their production costs: In 2018, they got $1.35 for a gallon of milk that cost them $1.90 to produce. This financial bomb has been exploding throughout dairy country. From 2007 to today, the number of American dairy farms dwindled from 70,000 to only 40,000, and most of them are imperiled. For example, last year in Wisconsin, where milk and cheese have long been economic and cultural mainstays, dairy farms shut down at the rate of nearly two a day.

And it’s not just our nation’s dairy farmers that are hurting. Small farmers and ranchers across the country are facing demise of their livelihoods. Fortunately, there are groups across the country fighting for family farms. The National Farmers Union — serving family farmers and ranchers — recently released its detailed recommendations for much-needed farm policy reforms. Farm Aid has a hotline for farmers in crisis: 800-FARM-AID. And People’s Action has started a rural strategy to help family farmers.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

IMAGE: Photo of a New England farm by Joel Dinda via Flickr.

 

U.S. Inflation Falls For First Time In Over A Year

U.S. Inflation Falls For First Time In Over A Year

Washington (AFP) — Consumer prices in the United States fell in August for the first time in more than a year, dragged lower by declines in energy, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index fell 0.2 percent on the month. It was the first decline in CPI since April 2013, surprising analysts who estimated it would be unchanged from July.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core CPI was flat in August.

Food prices edged up 0.2 percent, while energy prices accelerated their march downward, dropping a hefty 2.6 percent, the largest decline since March 2013.

Gasoline prices led the decline, down 4.1 percent. Electricity prices were the only major energy component that increased in August, up a scant 0.1 percent.

Year-over-year overall inflation was up 1.7 percent, easing from 2.0 percent in July.

The data offered fresh evidence of tame inflation, well below the Federal Reserve’s longer-term 2.0 percent target.

The weak report came amid a two-day meeting of the Fed’s monetary policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

“Startlingly weak core CPI looks like a fluke but is a powerful boost to FOMC doves today,” said Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics.

The central bank, in a post-meeting statement, is expected maintain its stance that its key near-zero interest rate will not be raised before mid-2015.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, rose 1.6 percent in July from a year ago, while the core PCE index increased 1.5 percent.

AFP Photo/Frederic J. Brown

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