Trump’s egg price fiction has suddenly become reality

For months, President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that egg prices are tumbling. It wasn’t true then, but it’s true now.

Egg prices fell 12.7% last month, the biggest monthly decline since 1984, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. And they could continue to fall this month, too: The USDA reported last week that a dozen large white-shell eggs now cost $3.30 on average, down a whopping 69 cents from a week before.

It’s a remarkable reversal after egg prices surged in each of the past five months – and 17 of the past 19 months – because of a deadly avian flu epidemic that necessitated the mass culling of egg-laying hens.

“Maybe the worst of EggGate has passed,” Tyler Schipper, associate professor in economics and data analysis at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, told CNN.

Nevertheless, egg prices remain significantly higher now than before the latest bird flu outbreak, and they cost 49.3% more last month than they did a year earlier. Eggs are still more expensive than when Trump took office, according to the BLS. Egg prices this past Easter, which typically rise in the run-up to the holiday, were the highest for any Easter on record, the USDA reported.

Well before last month’s decline, Trump had been touting falling egg prices as a sign that his administration’s plan to lower prices for consumers has been working. In February, the USDA announced an initiative to lower egg prices, including increased biosecurity on egg-laying farms, aid to farmers who have lost flocks and temporary lifting of restrictions on egg imports.