(The Hill) — President Trump weighed in on the cost of eggs around the country, claiming Friday at the White House that the prices are “getting too low.”
Trump praised Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins for doing a “great” job and then asserted that egg prices are “down 87 percent, but nobody talks about that.”
“You can have all the eggs. You watch, we have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low. So I just want to let you know that the prices are down,” the president said Friday after Dr. Mehmet Oz had been sworn in as the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
On Friday, the average wholesale price of eggs was $3.13, a slight uptick from the previous week, Department of Agriculture data shows. The prices have dropped since February, and retail prices are also beginning to drop.
“Price levels to the consumer have eased considerably from early-year highs but remain at levels not yet conducive to more than normal purchases needs,” the Agriculture Department wrote.
Prices of eggs went up to $6.23 per dozen in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported. It was $5.90 in February, nearly a dollar more compared to January’s $4.95 per dozen.
“By the way, prices are down. Groceries are down. Eggs, which they — you hit me so hard. I’ll never forget the first the first day, first week in office, they were screaming at me about eggs. I said, ‘What’s going with eggs?’ They were doubling and tripling. I said, ‘I just got here.’ They were up like double, triple, and you couldn’t get any,” Trump said on Friday.
“They said you won’t have eggs for Easter,” the president added. “Well, you can have all the eggs you want.”
Still, U.S. consumers are grappling with the price of eggs, with 49 percent of them altering the way they celebrate the holiday, a Ziff Davis survey found.
