Source: The Daily Beast

Trump Finds Bonkers Target to Blame for Affordability Crisis

Jack Revell
Sat, November 8, 2025 at 3:05 AM EST
4 min read

President Donald Trump has identified his prime suspect in the great affordability crisis of 2025: foreign-owned meatpacking companies.

The finger-pointing came shortly after Trump was confronted about cost-of-living pressures affecting Americans, with the president insisting groceries were “way down” under his leadership.

Trump, lashing out on Truth Social, announced that he had instructed his Department of Justice to investigate the “fishy” business going on with rising beef prices.

“While Cattle Prices have dropped substantially, the price of Boxed Beef has gone up—Therefore, you know that something is ‘fishy,’" Trump wrote.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-finds-bonkers-target-blame-080537181.html

Most Argentine administrations - since even before the days of the populist Juan Perón (1945-55) - have responded to inflation with:

· price controls
· increased supply requirements
· higher/lower tariffs and export/import controls
· exchange rate manipulation (when they could) - and other command economy policies.

Suffice it to say, they mostly failed.

They failed mostly because of that one variable command economy policies can't control: private-sector retaliation - and its subset, hoarding.

Wholesalers would often hoard and/or order steep mark-ups days before the new "anti-inflation" policy was announced - thereby dooming the announcement to failure from day one.

Often, they (and their RW media surrogates) would add to the problem further by spreading rumors of "shortages" - not unlike the U.S. TP crisis in March/April 2020.

Consumers themselves would drive the last nail in, by actually acting on said rumors - thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But nor was price/supply/currency deregulation the answer.

The mere specter of an upcoming such change, would often create a very similar dynamic.

Most recently, after Milei's election in November 2023, when inflation shot up from 8% a month in October, to over 25% in December - knowing a sharp devaluation and market deregulation was coming.

The moral of the story, if any, is that, once markets become accustomed to aggressive government meddling (beyond common-sense regulation), they enter into this speculative spiral - waiting for the cyclical wild swings in policy from left to right, in a bid to cash in each time.

And with consumers - and the economy - their inevitable victims.

and the Republicans handling of the economy usually sucks every time they are in control.

shithole and mirrors come to mind.

For a month now, they've been investing the funds in Argentine (peso-denominated) treasuries with a secret interest rate - which, as you can imagine, has caused a scandal in Argentina itself for the clownish Milei regime.

Bessent hopes to a) continue blackmailing Argentine voters with selling said pesos in one fell swoop if they "vote the wrong way" (i.e. for a Peronist) in 2027;

and b) either way, sell those pesos at a tidy profit (given the "secret" interest rate - rumored to be over 80%).

But that plan will only work if Argentina doesn't go through a sharp devaluation first. Which, of course, means that even as Argentines are now (thanks to Milei) hostages of Trump, Trump has made the U.S. Treasury a hostage of sorts to Argentina.

Goes to show it really does take two to tango. It's a sad dance, you know.

or so said Gramps McFuddlepants just yesterday.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-doubles-down-on-the-economy-despite-a-strong-rebuke-from-voters/ar-AA1Q5gC4


but in the same clip (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-hits-back-at-criticism-of-the-economy-under-his-second-administration-we-are-the-victors-on-affordability/vi-AA1Q1QQH, admitted to a positive inflation rate (2%) -- which means only one thing -- prices (on average overall) are higher now than before. That's true for any inflation rate above 0%.

At 0:30 in the video, speaking of inflation:

"We're down to 2%, and we'll be at maybe 1%. You want to always stay above 1%. Actually, you want a little tiny bit of inflation. We're the perfect number."

Again, dipshit, that means prices are rising and, on average, things are more expensive than they were. Not, "far less expensive"

Year-over-year it's 3%, and over the last 3 months it was 3.6% at an annualized rate.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1321&pid=60144