The word "food" was mentioned only twice in Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. Once, when moderator David Muir asked Trump if his proposed tariffs on foreign imports might affect the price of everyday items like food and medicine, and again when Trump, veering into divisive rhetoric, claimed without evidence that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, had started eating fellow residents’ pets.
“The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food,” Trump declared, invoking one of the GOP’s latest inflammatory and unfounded accusations against migrants.
The absence of substantive discussion on food policy was, in many ways, both notable and totally unsurprising. Just last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report showing that 18 million families, or 13.5% of American households, faced food insecurity in 2023, the highest level in nearly a decade. Meanwhile, Harris has already divided the grocery industry over her promise to pass the first ever federal ban on price-gouging.
Yet, it quickly became clear that policy discussions would be secondary to performance last night, something Jon Stewart noted in his “The Daily Show” wrap-up of the debate: “After surviving the PTSD of the last presidential debate, how unbelievably refreshing it is to go back to the same old ‘nobody's gonna answer any f**cking questions!’”
Still, concerns about hunger continue to plague the country, as the vast majority of Americans report feeling anxious about food inflation and as federal nutrition programs like WIC and SNAP are under consistent Republican fire despite a growing nationwide need for the services they provide. So, let’s flesh out a bit of what was actually discussed last night to better understand each candidates’ positions on major political flashpoints like the economy and immigration, and how those coincide with food.
Muir’s question to Trump regarding tariffs is actually a great place to start.
“Let’s drill down on this because your plan is what [Harris calls] a national sales tax,” Muir said. “Your proposal calls for tariffs, as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said you might double your plan, imposing tariffs up to 20% on goods coming into this country.”
Muir continued, saying many economists predict that tariffs at that level would pass increased costs onto the consumer.
“Vice President Harris has argued it'll mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing medication arguing it costs the typical family nearly $4,000 a year,” Muir said. “Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs?”
Trump responded by saying there wouldn’t be higher prices for Americans. “Who's gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years,” he said. “[In] charge, I was the only president ever — China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries.”
To better understand what impact Trump’s new proposed tariffs would have on the economy (and specifically food prices), one only needs to consider how the tariffs he implemented during his first presidency impacted consumers. After Trump levied billions of dollars in tariffs against China, the country struck back with its own set of retaliatory tariffs. Other nations soon followed suit.
As reported by CNBC, Trump’s trade war with China “cost Americans an estimated $195 billion since 2018, according to the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. The economic battle also led to the loss of more than 245,000 U.S. jobs, according to the U.S.-China Business Council.”
The impacts of the original tariffs were felt by consumers quickly. When interviewed by the network in 2018, just a few weeks after they went into effect, Matt Gold, a former deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative for North America under former President Barack Obama, told CNBC that, “Absolutely, you’re going to see higher prices passed on to consumers — almost immediately.”
The impact of the trade war is still being felt in the U.S. agricultural industry and could impact future production, further raising food prices. In March, Stephen Craven, a former US commercial diplomat and trade negotiator for the US Department of Commerce, wrote for CNN that a second Trump presidency would cost Americans more at the produce aisle, candy store and coffee shop. “You can check the origin of any product,” Craven said. “If it’s of a foreign origin, its price is likely going up if Trump becomes president.”
He continued:
Trump’s proposed tariffs will do immediate damage. He has called for a baseline 10% tariff on all imported goods. Given that the United States imports 15% of its food supply — including nearly all of its coffee and cacao, 60% of fresh fruit and nearly 40% of fresh vegetables — a 10% tariff would amount to a cost increase on some of America’s most important imports.
After all, importers will no doubt pass on the cost to consumers unless they have a reason to eat the cost themselves. As domestic suppliers are unlikely to be able to undercut them on price any time soon (America’s limited coffee farms, for instance, produce nowhere near the amount of coffee Americans drink), consumers are likely to foot the bill.
To address rising grocery prices, Harris has already promised to implement the first ever federal ban on price-gouging. “We all know that prices went up during the pandemic when the supply chains shut down and failed, but our supply chains have now improved and prices are still too high,” Harris said in an Aug. 16 speech. “ Many of the big food companies are seeing their highest profits in two decades, and while many grocery chains pass along these savings, others still aren’t.”
Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture data, Harris noted that grocery prices have increased 25% between 2019 and 2023, outpacing other consumer goods. Her plan, she said, would target businesses illegally hiking prices and failing to “play by the rules.”
The National Grocers Association (NGA), however, pushed back, calling the proposal “a solution in search of a problem.” NGA president Greg Ferrara argued that independent grocers, already strained by inflation, face rising costs across the board. He emphasized that unfair competition with big-box retailers, not price gouging, is the real issue driving up prices for smaller stores.
In addition to broad comments about inflation and the economy, immigration was a hot topic during the debate, which predictably turned to questions about the border. Trump attempted to deflect the moderators’ questions about policy by emphasizing what he sees to be a connection between immigration and crime (this, despite the fact, that “the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country,” per Muir), while Harris advocated for a bipartisan solution to what she characterized as broken immigration system. She pointed out how Trump obstructed the Border Act of 2024, a bill that aimed to balance stricter border enforcement with legal pathways for immigrants.
“He’d prefer to run on a problem rather than fixing a problem,” Harris said.
How the next president chooses to deal with immigration policy and the border is more closely tied to the health of the American food system than many supermarket shoppers might initially believe. According to the organization Farmworker Justice, the agricultural industry relies on a predominantly immigrant workforce,with approximately 68% of farmworkers being foreign-born, the overwhelming majority from Mexico.
Though other issues tied more directly to hunger in America, like the future of SNAP and WIC, or the possibility of universal free school meals nationwide, were not mentioned during the debate, there’s always the possibility they may appear in a second presidential debate ahead of the election — that is, if Donald Trump actually agrees to participate.
