From making it harder for American farmers to sell their goods to overseeing the distribution of lettuce linked to severe illness, President Donald Trump has repeatedly struggled during his second term to meet Americans' food needs. A recent report now details the extent to which his policies are directly straining both households' stomachs and their wallets.

"America's grocery squeeze has thus far been most painfully felt in a few expensive categories, like beef, coffee and chocolate," Axios' Erica Pandey reported on Sunday. "Now, the forces pushing up food prices are starting to pile up: expensive grain, soaring fertilizer and fuel, plus unpredictable weather and raging wars."

Pandey broke down how much of the situation stems from Trump's decisions. "The Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars have driven up diesel prices, making it more expensive to operate farm equipment for harvesting and to truck food from suppliers to stores," she explained. "The war in Iran has also disrupted fertilizer supply and price, as a large share of the world's fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Corn and wheat prices are surging, this week hitting their highest level in three years. Bad weather has hit corn crop yields, and the Russia-Ukraine war has roiled wheat exports."

The pressures come on top of trade policy shifts that have already squeezed the farm sector: retaliatory tariffs from major trading partners have curbed demand for US agricultural exports, while tariffs on imported inputs have raised costs for food processors. Food prices are a persistent political liability for the administration, having been a major voter concern in the 2024 election.

Pandey projected that the food price picture is set to deteriorate further. "There's reason to believe it's only going to get worse," she wrote. "In a widely cited report earlier this month, J.P. Morgan analysts warned that global food inflation would hit 5 [percent] in the first half of 2027, nearly double what it was in the first half of 2026. 'Price pressures are expected to extend through (the first half of 2027), as crop and price effects are still building and agricultural impacts lag the oceanic peak by 6 to 12 months,' they wrote."

Beyond rising prices, food safety has also declined on Trump's watch, a development many critics tie to his gutting of the FDA and his appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The FDA has seen thousands of staff departures amid the administration's broad cuts to the federal health bureaucracy, including personnel within its food division, even as the agency has faced a series of high-profile food recalls this year.

"The FDA believes that the biggest outbreak this season, the one affecting nine states so far, came to us aboard contaminated iceberg lettuce from Mexico," CBS News' David Pogue wrote on Sunday. "That lettuce was shipped nationwide by Taylor Farms, a huge distributor that supplies thousands of groceries and restaurants."

One expert suggested it is hard to imagine the contaminated lettuce problem is unrelated to the Trump administration's actions. "We've never seen anything like this. This is just an astonishingly large outbreak, record-setting outbreak," Susan Mayne, an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Public Health who led the FDA's food-safety department from 2015 to 2023, told CBS News.

She continued: "It could be inadequate bathroom facilities, inadequate hand-washing facilities. Somehow that water is getting contaminated from some other source – sewage, some other source."