In his first month as president, Donald Trump has alienated some of the the country’s biggest trading partners and closest allies. Now, he might have to crawl back to them—hat in hand—to ask for eggs.
As the price of eggs skyrockets due to the ongoing bird flu crisis, the Trump administration is scrambling to secure imports and bring cheaper eggs to grocery shelves. According to The New York Times, a dozen eggs currently averages about $8, compared to $2.25 last fall—not a good look for the president, who pledged to bring down food prices on “day one.”
In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that her department will consider “temporary import options to reduce egg costs in the short term.”
That means Trump is in an awkward position, because the largest source of eggs imported into the U.S. is none other than Canada—a country he has spent the past month antagonizing with tariffs and tough talk, including threats to annex the country and make it the 51st U.S. state.
Trump also trolled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after he announced that he would step down from the role.
The Netherlands, the U.K., and China follow as top egg suppliers, according to data from 2023, all of which Trump has either insulted, threatened, or hit with new trade barriers.
At his first full Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump fumed that the European Union—of which the Netherlands is a member—was “formed to screw the United States” and vowed to slap a 25 percent tariff on goods from the bloc.
China has already been hit with 10 percent tariffs in February, a far cry from the 60 percent his campaign promised, but enough to escalate tensions. And just last week, in an interview with the BBC, he lashed out at the U.K. for being “out of line” on trade with the U.S.
Trump’s aggressive trade policies aren’t just straining relations—they’re actively undermining Rollins’ efforts to lower egg prices. The tariffs imposed on these countries generally apply across the board, and eggs are no exception.
Turkey, one of the few countries that has maintained warm relations with Trump—perhaps thanks to his bromance with Turkey’s strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—recently announced plans to export a record 420 million eggs to the U.S.
It is unlikely to make much of a dent in America’s egg shortage—the number is less than 5 percent of the total amount of eggs produced in the United States in January.
