Saturday night: Trump signs executive order creating food supply chain task forces to protect competition.
- TC
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 8 hours ago
Saturday Dec 6, 2025 the White House announced:
"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Food Supply Chain Security Task Forces to Protect Competition. (a) The Attorney General and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission shall each establish a Food Supply Chain Security Task Force within the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, respectively, that will take all necessary and appropriate actions to investigate food-related industries within their established areas of expertise and determine whether anti-competitive behavior exists in food supply chains in the United States, as well as whether control of food-related industries by foreign entities is increasing the cost of food products in the United States or creating a national or economic security threat to Americans. "
No mention of import duties contributing to the "affordability crisis" (inflation) but a tariff detente for coffee, bananas and beef from Argentina Trump tariffs exempt products that can't be made in America.
President Nixon, June 13, 1973
Address to the Nation Announcing Price Control Measures.
"Effective immediately, therefore, I am ordering a freeze on prices. This freeze will hold prices at levels no higher than those charged during the first 8 days of June. It will cover all prices paid by consumers. The only prices not covered will be those of unprocessed agricultural products at the farm levels, and rents.
By Executive Order 11723 of June 13, 1973.
Therefore, I have decided that a new system for export controls on food products is needed--a system designed to hold the price of animal feedstuffs and other grains in the American market to levels that will make it possible to produce meat and eggs and milk at prices you can afford.
I have also taken another action today to stop the rise in the cost of living. I have ordered the Internal Revenue Service to begin immediately a thoroughgoing audit of the books of companies which have raised their prices more than 1 1/2 percent above the January ceiling. The purpose of the audit will be to find out whether these increases were justified by rising costs. If they were not, the prices will be rolled back." Reference: Address to the Nation Announcing Price Control Measures. | The American Presidency Project
Furthermore: "In the first six months of 1973, the prices of meat, poultry, and fish were rising at an annual rate of 40% . In May, 1973 the July soybean contract had gone from $3.27 to $8.98. Commodity traders were talking about a global protein shortage." Along with other crop prices, soybeans just kept going up. Critics, according to the New York Times, were contending that the White House’s preoccupation with the Watergate scandal had paralysed the Administration’s ability to cope. On June 13th President Nixon went on TV to address the American public. He began by stressing “what’s right in America”, referring to the economy as enjoying “one of the biggest, strongest booms in our history”. He went on to announce a number of anti-inflation measures, including another price freeze, on retail but not raw agricultural prices.
The next day, in a confused Chicago market, the July soybean contract rode a rollercoaster, sinking from the $11 close of the previous day to a low of $10, then recovering to a high of $11.70 before sinking again to close at $10.20. The pause didn’t last long. By June 22nd, the contract had almost touched $13, more than triple the price from a year previously. The USDA announced that the soybean supply would be down to about two weeks’ usage by September 1st and that “protein supplies are in a bind”. The agency requested a halt in trading on the soybean futures markets. Nixon vs. Soybeans
The 1973 food price spiral as explained by Schnittker Associates.
"THE SHARP RISE in U.S. and world prices of agricultural commodities in 1972 and 1973 traces to five principal causes: (1) a decline in world production of grains, and a persistent lag in growth in protein meal production relative to demand; (2) rapid growth in the demand for meats in all developed countries, based mainly on rising personal incomes; (3) U.S. farm policies and programs that discouraged expansion of soybean production, and continued to idle large acreages of cropland that should have been turned to livestock production at least three years ago; (4) administrative lags and errors regarding export subsidies, evaluation of crop reports from abroad, estimation of prospective export volumes, and the need to expand agricultural production sharply and to limit exports in 1973; and (5) devaluation of the dollar, which added to the demand for farm products and raised prices in countries whose currencies were devalued. The price rise occurred despite near-record grain and oilseed crops in the United States, and despite the utilization of sizable reserves of wheat and feed grains that had accumulated in prior years.