From Trading Economics today:
Figure 1: Gray line is TradingEconomics forecast. Orange line at 1/21/2025. Source: TradingEconomics, accessed 2/27/2025.
Egg prices as measured here have risen 22% since 1/21.
Interestingly, for at least the past couple of weeks, even as egg prices have risen, the terminal point forecast from TradingEconomics has remained the same.
Not sure USDA Secretary Rollins’s plan will dramatically change this trend. I do experience some cognitive dissonance as I read of the possible use of vaccination to treat bird flu, while other parts of the administration (HHS) are considering slow-walking new vaccines for people.
Off topic – Ukraine:
Contrary to what the liar-in-chief has said, our European (former?) allies have provided more support to Ukraine during Russia’s invasion than has the U.S. The mineral deal, if it goes through, screws the Europeans. They did more, and suffered more, for Ukraine than the U.S. has, but get nothing from this deal.
Here’s a look at the Ag Department’s $1 billion, 5-pronged plan to deal with bird flu:
https://www.agriculture.com/ag-organizations-react-to-changes-in-usda-bird-flu-strategy-11687313
The “reactions” of farm organizations is mostly pro-forma blurbs, but there is something between the lines. The beef and dairy people cheer for vaccination of birds above all else. Cow people know what would deal most effectively with the disease element of this problem, and say so. Bird people are split between egg and meat producers, with meat people afraid of export losses if vaccination is widespread. So the message from chicken people is a bland “Yay for money”. Vaccination is already used elsewhere, so I’m confused.
The price tag, $1 billion overall and $100 million for vaccine research, is chicken feed. “Better security measures”, to the tune if $500 million, is a way of saying “reduced slaughter of infected flocks”. The hope is that it will fix the problem, but we won’t know until it’s tried. The remaining $400 is income support for chicken farmers – the usual thing from politicians, but with the aim of re-establishing flocks quickly, so maybe helpful against inflation.
As regards the New! New! New! Not Biden’s! effort to combat bird flu, there’s this:
“But the measures come as the Agriculture Department is struggling to rehire key employees working on the virus outbreak who were fired as part of the administration’s sweeping purge of government workers. Roughly a quarter of employees in a critical office testing for the disease were cut, as well as scientists and inspectors.”
So eggs are going to keep getting more expensive until demand cools. Demand will cool when bird flu becomes readily communicable between humans.
we are in the second month of the trump presidency. and still I do not have the 2% mortgage trump promised. and inflation seems to be getting worse. it cost me more to buy a dozen eggs than to fill up my gas tank. and now we have an economic storm brewing on the horizon, with rising unemployment and profit contraction. hey rick stryker and bruce hall, why are trump’s economic promises failing in year 1? this was supposed to be taken care of on day 1. instead we have airplanes crashing into each other because we laid off the air traffic controllers. apparently somebody in the trump admin thought that would be a wise move. question is, Ricky, do we get a recession in year 1 or does trump hold it off until year 2? inquiring minds want to know.
Egg prices up, pending home sales down…to the lowest reading on record:
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/02/27/pending-home-sales-sink-all-time-low-january-2025
January is the off season, but look at the last few months. Pending sales are persistently weak, at levels below the lows of the housing bust.
Mortgage rates have come down since January, by about 1/4% at 30 years, so maybe we’ll see better data soon. Pending sales in January correspond roughly to existing sales in March.
New home sales were down 10.5% m/m in January, down 1.1% y/y. New sales are, however, well away from their Covid-era low.
this could be where seasonal adjustments distort the reported data…three consecutive El Nino winters created a bias for mild Januarys, along comes La Nina, we get the worst January in a quarter century, and the seasonal adjustments barely touch it…
Off topic – Who’s on first?
This is from the Washington Post, via Slate:
“(Secretary of State) Rubio had decreed that certain critical programs—such as aid to Ukraine and Syria and costs related to the PEPFAR program to combat HIV in Africa—would continue to be funded. Several times, USAID managers prepared packages of these payments and got the agency’s interim leaders to sign off on them with support from the White House.
“But each time, using their new gatekeeping powers and clearly acting on orders from Musk or one of his lieutenants, (DOGE employees) Farritor and Kliger would veto the payments—a process that required them to manually check boxes in the payment system one at a time…”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/doge-elon-musk-donald-trump-marco-rubio.html
So Musk’s squad of unelected, not-government-employed, not-security-cleared computer jockeys (with ties to white supremacists*) are overruling Cabinet Secretaries, Congress and the White House. Sometimes overruling them in suspiciously ties-to-white-supremacists kinda ways.
*Read the Slate piece for more on ties to white supremacists.
Remember when everyone was saying that Trump was just going to come in and ride the Goldilocks Biden economy and take the credit. Well, that didn’t last, did it. Not even three months.