Americansare concernedabout several economic issues: 72 percent claim the role of money in politics is a very big problem, 67 percent say the same about healthcare affordability, and 63 percent believe inflation is also a major issue.
The latter can feel particularly threatening when you see that your favorite food products are becoming more expensive, stretching your budget to a point where you have to make concessions to afford the basics.
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Americans are starting to notice that certain food prices are going up
Image credits:Franki Chamaki (not the actual photo)
Some, like TikToker ‘Knightfall Vader,’ even fear that it will lead to great civil unrest
Image credits:@knightfall__vader
He filmed the tags on local store shelves
His video immediately went viral
So, the guy made another one with even more examples
Which also received a lot of attention
But is the situation that concerning?
Image credits:Getty Images (not the actual photo)
‘Knightfall Vader’ is really trying to sound the alarm bell. However, if you strip his videos of intimidating soundtracks and police siren emojis, the prices of those items alone don’t mean much—we need to look at more numbers to paint ourselves a more accurate picture.
According todatafrom the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of economy-wide inflation, increased 0.7 percent from December 2024 to January 2025 and was up 3.0 percent from January 2024.
The CPI for all food increased 0.6 percent from December 2024 to January 2025, and food prices were 2.5 percent higher than they were in January 2024.
If we take a step back at look at a longer timeframe, the change is more dramatic. Food prices are up 31% since 2019, andaccording to experts, there’s no single factor to blame for that. Things like rising operating costs, supply-chain disruptions, corporate profits, and political instability all play a part.
However, there’s also politics. New import tariffs could raise costs for households and farmers even more. Plans to impose duties on American agriculture imports might boost the price of vegetables, sugar, and coffee. Meat is also at risk — with the lowest cattle herdin over seventy years, the U.S. imported a record $11.7 billion in beef and derived products last year.
“Any way you slice it, this is a tax on American citizens and will have a real impact on our economy,”saidMatt Campbell, a risk management consultant at futures and options brokerage StoneX in West Des Moines, Iowa. “Ultimately, this has inflationary impacts.”
A few days ago, the current White House administration said the U.S. is thinking of imposing tariffs on “external” agricultural products starting on April 2. The move comes just as the country’s food imports balloon, driving its agriculture trade deficit to a record $49 billion this year.
Many of the TikToker’s viewers are pretty alarmed and uneasy over what’s to come
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