If you’re a President Donald Trump cheerleader, right or wrong, you may consider the executive order he issued last Saturday as part of the puzzle in addressing the high cost of groceries. But if you’re one of those struggling to make ends meet and beginning to think the TDS naysayers may have a point, you may wonder why the president is counting on the attorney general and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to run a task force whose sole job is to look into whether anti-competitive practices by foreign entities can be held to blame for prices.

“An affordable and secure food supply is vital to America’s national and economic security,” the president explained in the order. “However, anti-competitive behavior, especially when carried out by foreign-controlled corporations, threatens the stability and affordability of America’s food supply. In recent years, certain companies in the American food supply chain have even settled civil suits alleging price fixing for tens of millions of dollars. Food supply sectors, including meat processing, seed, fertilizer, and equipment, have similar vulnerabilities to price fixing and other anti-competitive practices. My Administration will act to determine whether anti-competitive behavior, especially by foreign-controlled companies, increases the cost of living for Americans and address any associated national security threat to food supply chains.”

There’s no question the cost of groceries is a key issue, as food prices account for 20% of the inflationary bite since 2021. The issue was an assist to Democrat Zohran Mamdani, who promised to bring down prices with city-run grocery stores, in winning last month’s New York City mayoral election. And it’s certainly a concern that several of our food suppliers, particularly Chinese-owned pork processor Smithfield Foods and Brazilian-controlled beef producers JBS and National Beef, are foreign companies with significant market shares.

It’s not waving the white flag by any means, but this executive order may signal that President Trump thought his broad program of tariffs would work more quickly to bolster our agricultural sector by encouraging fairer trade. Unfortunately, the progress hasn’t come fast enough for consumers.

Those tariffs hurt American farmers particularly hard, so the president has announced a $12 billion aid package for row crop growers. “This relief will provide much-needed certainty to farmers as they get this year’s harvest to market and look ahead to next year’s crops,” the president announced, “and it’ll help them continue their efforts to lower food prices for American families.” Trump also promised to “take off a lot of the environmental restrictions that they have on [farm] machinery,” which is a step in the right direction but won’t pay off for a few years. In cases like that, we’ve reached the bitter harvest of the bad (and unnecessary) regulation planted by the previous administration to combat the elusive idea that we can change the climate.

Last month, our Nate Jackson gave some mild but necessary criticism of Trump’s approach of dismissing the “dead issue” of affordability, correctly asking instead, “Why is anyone even talking about affordability? Because Democrats make stuff unaffordable!”

All that is true, but the sad fact is that our political system is binary. You can vote for Republicans, a party whose congressional delegation makes herding cats seem like child’s play in that they seldom agree on anything, which shows in their work output this term. Or you vote for Democrats, who are united in their hatred for Trump and love for government power, the more centralized the better. Hence, you have the Mamdani promise of city-run grocery stores, which would become federally funded the moment the AOCs and Bernie Sanders of the world get the chance.

Given the urgency of the situation, it’s disappointing that we’ve left it to the wheels of bureaucracy to grind the issue into fine powder and sweep it under the rug until the first briefing is due next summer. Instead, Newt Gingrich addressed the root of the problem in a recent Substack post.

“Republicans must acknowledge this is a real problem. They must also realize that turning it around is going to be an enormously challenging project. It will not be a quick messaging blitz,” warned Newt. “They must stop inflation and then pass smart policies to cause prices to go back down — not by government price controls but by fixing the underlying issues driving up costs in the economy. Further, it will not be enough to bring prices down a little bit or by lowering some nominal inflation benchmark. People need to feel it. Prices need to keep going down until the American people stop saying affordability is a problem. This means Republicans need to fix systems on every level. We need a dramatic increase in goods and services and a dramatic decrease in waste and unnecessary costs. This will drop prices by flooding the economy with new goods and services.”

That approach would be the mirror image of the tremendous influx of government cash dumped into the system during the pandemic, which didn’t come with goods or services — just rampant Bidenflation.

After the great start and all the DOGE momentum, the Trump administration has been in a bit of a slump over the last few months. If he doesn’t want the last two years to be a missed opportunity to restore America’s greatness because the Democrats will be focused on impeachment and otherwise getting even with him, and have the majority to do so, the president needs to present an “all hands on deck” approach.

A task force doesn’t get that done.