Republicans face an uphill battle heading into the midterms as a major “grocery price shock” appears poised to surge already-inflated food costs, Axios reported Sunday.
“The next grocery price shock could hit much harder — and wider. And midterms are 65 days away,” Axios’ Mike Allen wrote in the outlet’s Sunday morning newsletter.
A convergence of factors has sent grocery prices soaring in recent months, chief among them being President Donald Trump’s tariffs and his deeply unpopular war with Iran. A recent string of “poor weather” that has sent corn and wheat prices to their highest levels in three years, however, coupled with the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war, risks sending grocery prices even higher.
“Wheat’s a key ingredient in pantry staples, and corn is a major animal feed. So as they go up, so can meat, dairy and eggs,” Axios’ report reads. “Add all these pressures to the list of already inflated food items: Instant coffee is up 15.8% year-over-year; tomatoes, 12.8%; beef roasts, 13.5%; apples, 11.1%. There’s reason to believe it’s only going to get worse.”
A new report from JPMorgan released Friday predicted that global food inflation would “accelerate sharply into 2027,” growing from roughly 2.8% in the first half of 2026 to around 5% by the first half of next year.
“JPMorgan frames the risk around a set of compounding pressures it calls the ‘Five Ws’: War, Weather, Warehousing, Water, and Waste with particular emphasis on fertilizer supply disruptions and the potential for a ‘super’ El Niño event,” reads a summary of the JPMorgan report from the financial news data service Mettis Global.
“Unlike oil, which benefits from flexible substitutes and strategic reserves, nitrogen fertilizer has limited near-term alternatives and must be applied at precise points in the crop cycle, meaning delays reduce yields regardless of later conditions.”
Allen warned that it was not unlikely that Americans would soon see the impact of the convergence of factors in their grocery store bills.
“These forces don’t drive up your grocery budget overnight. But compounding strains on the cost of growing, harvesting and transporting food could make an already expensive grocery run even more expensive,” he wrote.
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