Who Will Take Credit When Egg Prices Fall?

Donald Trump promised to bring inflation down on day one of his presidency. He has yet to succeed. Politicians and pundits looking to sway the public away from President Trump have jumped on persistently high prices—eggs in particular—as a winning messaging strategy.

In a recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a five part plan to combat highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and the resulting high egg prices. The major tenets are to reexamine a policy on culling whole flocks, to increase imports for eggs, to explore the potential impacts of poultry vaccination, and to provide support for biosecurity measures on poultry farms. The Secretary has pledged $1 billion for the latter two items. As Secretary of Agriculture, she can sidestep administration cost cutting efforts by taking these funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation, an entity created to cover variable farm payments that has become a slush fund for whatever administration is in power.

The long-term success of Secretary Rollins’ initiatives is hard to predict. Culling whole flocks is unpopular and expensive and a better alternative is welcome, but it is not clear that one exists. Meanwhile, the success of trade policy to reduce egg prices will depend in part on the willingness of trading partners to sell eggs to the US, as well as international cooperation on a bird flu vaccine. This last item is a major sticking point for many industry groups hoping to maintain access to export markets.

In her Op-Ed, Secretary Rollins urged patience, and she is right to do so. Despite what Democratic strategists might think, voters are smart enough to know that a new president’s economic agenda takes longer than a few weeks to yield results. Even if HPAI were eradicated today it could take months for egg prices to return to normal as laying hen populations rebound. But like human influenza, avian influenza is seasonal. The first outbreak of the current strain of HPAI became widespread in 2022. While prices and disease spread have been exceptional this winter, egg prices have spiked the last two winters as well, following the spread of influenza by geese and other birds migrating south in the fall. As temperatures warm up and cases decline this summer, egg producers and consumers should find temporary relief, allowing the Trump administration to claim a win for the changing of the seasons.

HPAI cases will rise again next fall, but even if a vaccine is not adopted, there is no guarantee that the upcoming winter will be as bad as the one we are leaving behind. Treatment strategies, farm practices, and natural immunity are all likely to improve over the next nine months with or without intervention from the Trump administration. Egg prices will fall this summer, and if they do not bounce back with a vengeance next year Democrats will have handed President Trump a highly visible win.

International coordination on an avian flu vaccine would be a remarkable achievement, but even that is not a panacea as many vaccines have been shown to drastically reduce bird mortality, but are less effective at preventing the spread of avian flu. As Rollins acknowledges, controlling this avian flu epidemic will likely require persistent action on multiple fronts. This could include improving sanitation and biosecurity on farms, development of novel methods to control avian influenza in wild birds, and even the use of genetic engineering to breed layer hens that are resistant to HPAI.

Unfortunately, the administration’s attempts to execute indiscriminate firings, including within the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine—the body responsible for reviewing and approving veterinary medications and intentional genomic alterations in poultry and livestock—and the uncertain future of the public agricultural research workforce, could slow the development and deployment of the type of new technologies that have provided consumers with increasingly affordable eggs for decades.