Free eggs are handed out outside the Brown Butter Craft Bar & Kitchen in New York on March 21, 2025. The cost of a dozen eggs reached an all-time high of $6.23 that month.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
President Trump has repeatedly boasted about lowering the price of eggs during his second term. He often blamed former President Joe Biden for the recent high costs American consumers paid for the staple, saying it was his return to power that finally ended the egg price surge.
It’s true that the price of eggs fell by more than half during Trump’s second term. According to federal data, the average cost of a dozen eggs when he took office in January 2025 was $4.95, while the typical price in August was just $2.27.
But the reasons why egg prices have fallen so far during this period are complex, and agriculture experts say the administration has taken other steps that have helped achieve this result. Stronger for farms to make a profit.
The biggest factor affecting egg prices over the past five years may not have much to do with politics. Avian flu has decimated flocks across the United States and eaten into national egg supplies, causing retail prices to soar. Prices fell further as herds recovered.
“It’s the single most important factor, and it overshadows everything else,” said Michael Walden, professor emeritus of economics at North Carolina State University.
The Trump administration has helped farmers strengthen biosecurity measures to protect their herds, and Walden also noted that the U.S. Department of Agriculture tried to cut red tape for egg producers. But he said Trump’s tariffs on foreign trading partners and the war with Iran have made life more difficult for farmers by increasing their operating costs for essentials like diesel.
“While the federal government has attempted to relax some regulations on farmers in order to reduce costs, the benefits have been far outweighed by the drawbacks,” he said.
Now, as the midterm elections approach, Trump and his fellow Republicans continue to grapple with voters’ concerns about affordability, particularly the price of food.
Bird flu hits egg industry
In early 2022, the United States began experiencing its largest outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), or bird flu, in years. This led to the death of millions of laying hens that year and prices rose in the months that followed.
A similar pattern repeated itself in late 2024 and early 2025, when another wave of bird flu ravaged American farms. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, nearly 51 million laying hens died or were euthanized between October 2024 and March 2025 alone.
A smaller flock was left to lay eggs, causing prices to spike. The cost of a dozen eggs reached an all-time high of $6.23 in March 2025, just two months into Trump’s second term.
Consumers have strongly felt the rise in prices. Agriculture experts say that’s because eggs are what economists call an inelastic product, meaning demand for eggs doesn’t change much when the price rises.
Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, an industry marketing group, says that’s because eggs occupy an indispensable place in the American diet.
“Not only are they center of the plate, not only are people eating them on their own, but they’re also using them in baked goods, in drinks to froth and whip things,” she said. “They use them in all kinds of recipes and different ways.”
Last winter proved less severe for bird flu on U.S. farms, and farmers were able to restock their flocks, helping to calm last year’s record prices.
How the Trump administration responded
In February last year, after the worst outbreak of bird flu, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced up to $1 billion to combat the disease that had swept through the nation’s flocks.
It included up to $500 million to help farms improve biosecurity protections, which include things like hygiene protocols and wildlife protection measures, complementing what many producers were already doing. (The USDA had conducted biosecurity assessments on more than 900 farms as of June 2025.) Up to $400 million was set aside to pay farmers who had to cull their flocks or destroy eggs in response to potential infection, and the amount of compensation they could receive per bird increased.
Metz, of the American Egg Board, said farmers always work closely with the USDA during avian flu outbreaks and Rollins’ plan has helped, too. But it’s also true that last year’s bird flu season was simply much milder.
“I think these initiatives have progressed, but we’ve also benefited in the industry because avian flu is very cyclical,” Metz said. “It tracks the wild bird population, and so we haven’t had bird flu in the environment in the same way this year as last year.”
The USDA also said last year that it would study ways to increase egg imports — and imports have indeed climbed. U.S. egg imports in 2025 reached 121 million dozen equivalents, up from 29.8 million dozen equivalents imported the previous year.
Mark Jordan, executive director of LEAP Market Analytics, a consulting firm specializing in animal protein markets, said that while the rise in imports was a positive step toward rebuilding the domestic supply devastated by avian flu, it had a relatively modest impact on the U.S. poultry industry, which produces about 90 billion eggs a year. “It’s not nothing, but it’s a small impact,” he said.
Jordan said that ultimately the recovery in egg prices was due to how well farms were protected from infection – and how serious this wave of illness was. “I would say 90 to 95 percent of the impact that we’ve seen in terms of lower prices is just due to some measure of biosecurity success and some measure of, you know, luck,” he said.
Also last year, the Justice Department and 17 states settled an alleged price-fixing case against three major egg producers: Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch and Versova. Prosecutors alleged that coordination between the companies pushed egg prices even higher in recent years.
Farmers hit by tariffs and war in Iran
Even as the Trump administration responded to bird flu, it also imposed tariffs on foreign trading partners and went to war with Iran — two moves that have driven up operating costs for U.S. farmers, industry experts said.
Poultry farmers have faced “pretty strong inflationary pressures from corn and soybean meal” to feed their flocks, Jordan said, while Metz, of the American Egg Board, noted that others who farm to feed their birds have faced higher fertilizer costs. Transportation prices have skyrocketed due to rising energy prices.
And egg producers have also seen rising packaging costs, including cardboard and other corrugated materials, which have been affected by trade negotiations between the United States and Canada, Metz said.
“There are a lot of inputs that go into a farm that people don’t realize beyond the animal itself, and the cost of all of those inputs has increased quite significantly over the last few years,” she said.
This puts pressure not only on egg producers, but also on the food industry as a whole, driving up food prices for American consumers. Federal data showed that food prices in August rose 2.2% year-over-year, even as egg prices fell 23% during the same period.
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