Once a week I splurge (!) on a grilled hamburger, and the price is up 23% since Trump was elected

 Yeah I use charcoal, and light it with gasoline, too.

 

 

I can still make a grass-fed one at home for $1.62

 

37% of 46 average food prices I track through FRED at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis made new all-time average high prices for the first half of 2026

More than half of the 17 offenders are beef products.

In addition to the 9 beef products, also appearing are beer, wine, chocolate chip cookies, lettuce, tomatoes, white rice, coffee, and orange juice. 

Most of the 46 foods tracked are priced near, if not at, their all-time highs in 1H2026, but inflation over time matters when evaluating what's what.

Fresh whole chicken, for example, remains a good value compared with beef.

100% ground beef purchased in the summer of 1984 for $1.31 per pound should cost about $4.22 per pound today, but in reality is about $6.78 on an average basis. You are paying a premium of 61% over inflation when you eat hamburger today.

One whole chicken, however, purchased at an average price of 66-cents per pound in the summer of 1980 should cost about $2.67 per pound today adjusted for inflation, but is only about $2.04. A year ago it was $2.06.

Smart shoppers choose the fricken chicken. 

 

 

"We got this, we got this" USDA says about Plan B after Plan A began too late, with too little urgency, and will be short of the needed 500 million sterile screwworm flies until 2028 at the earliest

We are so screwed, so to speak. 

Hamburgers will never be cheap as long as Donald Trump is president.

 

 Flesh-eating screwworm is confirmed in the U.S., officials say

... "The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again," the USDA said.

... Dudley Hoskins, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the USDA ... “USDA invested heavily in the tools needed to eliminate NWS ever since cases started increasing in Central America and Mexico,” Hoskins said. “The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again.” ... 

 Confirmed screwworm case in Texas sends two biotech stocks higher

... regional director of the Federal Crop Agency ... “We just had a conditional use drug approved; U.S. producers can handle it.” 

August 15, 2025: 

In Texas cattle country, ranchers brace for flesh-eating screwworms: The devastating pests have crossed Central America. Despite stepped-up efforts, there are not enough sterile flies to stop them.

... Washington has halted cattle imports from Mexico and invested millions in setting up a new sterile fly production plant in Metapa, Mexico. But it will take roughly a year to come online. 

 ... The U.S. eliminated screwworms in the 20th century by flying planes over hotspots to drop red-striped boxes packed with sterile flies, sometimes called “cupcakes” by ranchers. The USDA constructed a fly production plant in Mission, Texas, in 1962, that pumped out 96 trillion flies until it was decommissioned in 1981. Now the USDA is planning to resurrect the plant to disperse sterile flies, while Texas officials have scattered 100 screwworm traps along the border.

USDA inspectors known as Tick Riders who patrol the border on horseback to guard against another pest, the cattle fever tick, have also been tasked with conducting screwworm preventive treatment for all cattle and horses they find in the border area.

At the heart of the problem is an unworkable math equation. The USDA estimated 500 million flies need to be released weekly to push the fly back to the Darien Gap. At its maximum, the Panama plant produces just 100 million. 

“It’s an overwhelming situation at this point,” Dr. Lansford said. “Screwworm is obviously doing well in Mexico, and they’re up against the same challenges we are.” ...

October 21, 2025: 

Mexico’s major initiative to eradicate the screwworm will be ready in July 2026: The government is overhauling a fly production complex in Chiapas to make it the ‘world’s most modern’ facility of its kind, capable of manufacturing millions of sterile specimens as a chemical-free form of pest control

... Moscamed, as the factory is called, will begin manufacturing 100 million sterile flies by July 2026. ...

Until now, the sterile flies that are spread throughout the country to combat the screwworm plague (100 million each week) are brought from a plant managed by the Panama-United States Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of the Cattle Screwworm (Copeg), in Panama, where they have been working at maximum capacity to control the pest since January 2025. ...

With the other leg of the project, the construction of a manufacturing plant for these flies in Texas, international efforts project a production of up to 500 million flies per week, which will be released throughout the region. If international cooperation continues, myiasis could be eradicated in less time than the first time. Some representatives of Senasica have even talked about achieving this goal in five years. ...

USDA didn't break ground on the Texas facility until two months ago.

April 17, 2026: 

USDA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Break Ground on New Texas Sterile Fly Production Facility

 ... Initial operational capability targeted for November 2027, reaching production of 100 million sterile flies per week. 

Construction continues immediately beyond initial operations to scale full production capacity to 300 million sterile flies per week. ...

This new state-of-the-art facility will complement USDA’s ongoing production of 100 million sterile flies per week at the Panama-based COPEG facility. USDA has also invested $21 million to support modernization of Mexico’s Metapa, MX facility, expected to be operational in summer 2026. ... 

Gold and silver are still up 5+% year to date

 SPX +10.52% ytd

WTI +53.11% ytd

 

Meanwhile in April: 

Hamburger +18.9% yoy

Coffee +29.0% yoy

Unleaded regular gasoline +28.0% yoy

Electricity +7.2% yoy

Natural gas +3.1% yoy

[Trump 9/21/2024: "We will cut your energy prices in half. Mark it down . . . within 12 months . . ."] 

Milk +1.5% yoy

Whole Chicken -1.6% yoy 

Eggs -56.1% yoy

Tomatoes +50.0% yoy

 

And: 

30-year mortgage average monthly, above 6% since August 2022

Full time jobs above 50% of population just 6 of the last 25 quarters, all under Joe Biden

 

Trump was useless when we needed him

 Trump: NATO Was Useless When We Needed Them, But Actually We Didn't Need Them

 

My morning coffee, my Sunday hamburger, my Italian tomatoes, pasta and olive oil, and now even my salad

I coulda mentioned salad the other day, but I didn't.

The average price made a new record high in 1Q2026. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why BLTs and salad just got more expensive — tariffs, war send tomato prices soaring

This story is about fresh tomatoes, not salad, and it is interesting, but the average price of tomatoes in 1Q2026 still hasn't surpassed 1Q2016.

Adjusted for inflation since 1Q1980, tomatoes could cost $2.64 per pound, but they were only $1.98 in 1Q.

As the story says, canned tomatoes are much cheaper. I make my sauce from stewed whole plum tomatoes from a can, preferably Italian, preferably San Marzano or Parma, but there are many acceptable American brands to choose from. 

New high prices for coffee and ground chuck

 

If Daniel McCarthy were a conservative who understood history and human nature, he wouldn't issue embarrassing pronunciamentos like these

 Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. ...

That's what we thought in 1991 about the victorious George H. W. Bush. And then somehow we lost our minds and elected blow-job Bill with his Sunday-go-to-meeting Bible under his arm, big enough to choke a mule. 

The state of mind – and the state of the world – that made possible the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, has passed, never to return. ...

There wasn't a single state of mind from 1991 to 2003.

We didn't choose 9/11. It chose us and changed our minds. And the lunatics in Tehran are crazier and far more dangerous than Osama ever was.

Hell, we didn't even choose the Gulf War. Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and set it on fire as it withdrew in January 1991.

We didn't choose this Iran War, either. Iran chose it for us when its proxies invaded our ally Israel in October 2023.

The state of mind and the state of the world . . . hasn't changed at all, except that Trump's a little slow on the uptake. 

The passions that involve us in foreign conflicts in the future will be those of a younger cohort. ...

Yes, it isn't just about a state of mind, is it? Things happen which we can't control. You can't predict "no more wars" anywhere, even though you can pretend for a long time, for example from the summer of 1939 to late 1941, and then something forces your hand.

... if the Iran war goes badly – as badly as the Iraq War did for Bush – Trump’s new style of interventionism will be repudiated by voters as thoroughly as Trump’s own election repudiated the neoconservatives. 

Bush 41 was popular because he won the Gulf War and suddenly wasn't because of the economy. And Bush 43 was re-elected convincingly in 2004, hello. If America didn't support his Iraq War, it had a funny way of showing it. There is no comparison with Trump.

Trump's economy already sucks and unsurprisingly right out of the box polling indicates Americans are against his attack on Iran. We're blowing up $1 billion a day over there and can't afford a lousy hamburger at home. We don't have to wait for Iran to go badly for the voters to repudiate Trump.

The only thing Dan is probably right about is this, unfortunately:

. . . what comes next will be an even more radical phase in domestic politics. ... 

Here.

I can no longer has cheezburger under Donald J. Trump

 100% ground beef hit a new all time high average price of $6.752/lb in Jan 2026.

 

 

100% ground beef averaged a record $6.089 in year one of Trump 2.0, and hit a record high $6.687 in Dec 2025 to celebrate the New Golden Age for them, not for you

 Like many other such graphs, the graph for 100% Ground Beef won't show the 2025 average because the government shutdown meant no figure for October in the data.

The average $6.089 in 2025 is for eleven months without October, with October obviously a high figure, too, which means the annual average is no doubt higher than $6.089.

 

 

Victor Davis Hanson wouldn't know chaos if it walked up and introduced itself

 

Democrats Wielding Chaos as a Strategy

Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness

 

This guy is delusional. 

 

I thought we were going to invade Greenland, Canada, and Panama at the beginning of the year, but instead we've actually gone to war in Yemen, Iran, and now Venezuela and maybe even Nigeria, all in nine months. But yeah, the Democrats are responsible for all the chaos.

 

I thought we were going to cut federal spending with Elon Musk at the helm, but all we got was a phony Republican tax and spending plan for the Fourth of July which has put us $2 trillion more in debt just four months later. But damn all those fired government workers who showed up in Virginia this week to vote for a Democrat for governor.

 

Everyday it's some new bullshit from Mad King Ludwig, but this egghead is upset that the public is reacting negatively to each new pile of it.

 

The administration and MAGA do not talk enough about . . . tolerable inflation . . . a calmer Middle East . . .

 

Good god, man, Joe Six Pack can't afford a lousy hamburger at McDonald's and the Red Sea is no longer safe for free trade.

 

 

 

  

Prices of 20 food items posted new all time highs on a quarterly average basis under Donald Trump in 3Q2025

 The 20 foods shown making new all time highs represent 43% of the 46 foods I have been tracking in the FRED database at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. Prices are per pound unless otherwise noted.

Beef Products:

Round Roast $8.182

All Uncooked Roasts 8.72 

Choice Chuck Roast 8.839

Round Steak 9.04

All Uncooked Steaks 12.12

Choice Sirloin Steak 14.003

Ground Chuck 6.43

100% Ground Beef 6.298

All Uncooked Ground 6.593

 

Other Meats:

 

Whole Chicken 2.072

Pork 3.716

 

Dairy Products:

 

Ice Cream 6.425/half gallon

Cheddar Cheese 6.071

 

Other Foods:

 

Orange Juice 4.682/12oz. frozen

Coffee 8.808 

Sugar 1.043 (two quarters in a row)

Bananas 0.664

Potato Chips 6.84

Chocolate Chip Cookies 5.179

Beer 1.832/pint 

All eight beef prices I track made new record average highs in July 2025

Adjusted for inflation since July 1984, 100% ground beef should cost $3.88/lb in July 2025, but it's actually 61% higher than that.

 

  

100% Ground Beef $6.254/lb

Ground Chuck 6.338

Round Roast 7.909

All uncooked beef roasts 8.397

Choice chuck roast 8.439

Round steak 8.69

All uncooked beef steaks 11.875

Choice sirloin steak 13.554 

 

 

Food items making new all time high average prices in the United States in June 2025

 

 All prices are FRED data from the St. Louis Fed in U.S. dollars.

 

The headlines are correct. Average beef prices are out of this world in June 2025:

Round Roast $7.762/lb

All Uncooked Beef Roasts $8.203 

Ground Chuck $6.103

Choice Chuck Roast $8.197 

100% Ground Beef $6.12

All Uncooked Ground Beef $6.342

All Uncooked Beef Steaks $11.491

Choice Sirloin Steak $12.923.

 

But that's not all:

Whole Chicken $2.086

Frozen Orange Juice Concentrate $4.493

Coffee $8.132

Potato Chips $6.815

Ice Cream $6.493.

 

Most of the other items in my list of over 40 basic food products remain near their average all time highs. Food price inflation was 3% year-over-year in June 2025. There has been no actual food price deflation since 2016.

 

 

Food items making new all time high average prices in the United States in May 2025

 All prices are FRED data from the St. Louis Fed in U.S. dollars.

 

Ground Chuck 6.018/lb

Coffee 7.931

White Sugar 1.054

Bananas 0.655

Potato Chips 6.731

Ice Cream 6.466/half gallon

100% Ground Beef 5.981/lb

All Uncooked Ground Beef 6.245

American Cheese 5.063

Beer 1.834/pint 

Eleven foods which made new all-time high average prices in April 2025

 Round roast $7.616/lb

All roasts 7.995

Round steak 8.627

All steaks 11.12

Sirloin steak 12.326

Ground chuck 5.996

100% ground beef 5.801

All ground beef 6.142 

Coffee 7.536

Sugar 1.021

 

Beer 1.827/pint

18 things which set new price records on an average basis in 1Q2025: beef, beef, and more beef, ice cream, sugar, coffee, OJ, chicken, American cheese, beer, wine, eggs, electricity

 

sirloin

chuck roast

beef roasts

beef steaks

ground beef

ice cream

sugar

coffee

orange juice

chicken

ground chuck

round steak

round roast

American cheese

beer

wine

electricity

eggs