Prices of eggs and gas are down. Does Trump deserve credit, or is something else going on?

San Francisco Chronicle​

7 hours ago

President Donald Trump ran on promises to bring down prices for Americans. Today, prices of eggs and gas are down from their peaks of the past few years. Can he take credit?
Nope, experts say.
In both cases, prices were expected to come down as external factors abated. There's no compelling, recently implemented federal policy that had much impact on either commodity.
First, let's look at the numbers.
A year ago, the average national price of a gallon of unleaded gas was $3.47, according to AAA, and $4.88 a gallon in California. So far this month, the average price is $3.14 a gallon nationally and $4.77 in California. (Gas prices are higher in California for a combination of reasons, including regulatory issues, the special type of gas required to be sold here, and the highest gasoline taxes in the country.)
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Doug Johnson, a spokesperson for AAA Northern California, said gas industry experts predicted prices were going to come down this year 'no matter who would've won the 2024 election.'

Egg prices have fluctuated a lot since the most recent bird flu outbreak began in 2022. A year ago, the average price of a dozen eggs was $2.35. Prices skyrocketed from $2.11 in October to an all-time high of $8.17 a dozen in March. As of this week, the average price has dropped to $2.54 a dozen — only 8% higher than a year ago — and is likely to continue dropping as bird flu detections decline.
'Eggs have come down 400%,' Trump declared, wrongly, in a White House interview on Fox News. Going from $8.17 to $2.54 would work out to a 68.9% decrease. 'Price of eggs has dropped 61% since Trump took office,' declared Fox Business in a piece comparing January and June egg prices. A headline on the right-wing news and opinion site Daily Caller said, 'Grocery Prices See Biggest Drop In 5 Years As Trump's Policies Take Effect.'
But, again, experts say Trump's policies aren't driving the price decreases. So what actually is behind them?
Why gas prices have come down in California
Gas is down 13 cents a gallon just from last week in the Bay Area, said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for cost comparison website GasBuddy. That's more than the drop we've seen at the national level — only 2 cents compared with the previous week.
Most of the recent drop here is because refinery issues in California have begun to resolve, De Haan said. However, refinery repairs are ongoing, so the decline may be only temporary, he added.
Though Trump ran on 'drill, baby, drill' and his administration has discussed opening public lands for oil and gas drilling, federal policy takes a long time to work its way to the price at the pump, De Haan said.
'It really takes years for those types of policies to have a broad significant impact,' he said.
Both California and national gas prices are up from January, when Trump took office.
Why eggs are getting cheaper again
Though the current bird flu outbreak, now in its third year, is not over, it's not as bad as it was at the start of 2025. Detections of bird flu in commercial and backyard flocks have decreased by a lot, which is part of the reason egg prices have dropped, said Daniel Sumner, a professor of agricultural economics at UC Davis.
This isn't the first time bird flu has hit chicken farms in the United States. The most recent outbreak was in 2015. Like ebola, bird flu is endemic, Sumner said: Somewhere in the world, there's always a wild bird that is carrying the virus.
What's different about this outbreak is how long it's lasted. Often, like many pandemics humans have faced before, an outbreak hits and then fades away. That hasn't been the case yet with this incidence of bird flu.
Bird flu was first detected in a flock in Dubois, Ind., in February 2022. A year ago, when eggs were $2.35 a dozen, there were 12 confirmed bird flu detections in the U.S.
The virus was detected more frequently in commercial and backyard flocks throughout late 2024 and early 2025: 16 in October, 62 detections in November, 122 in December, a peak of 133 in January.
When bird flu is detected in a flock, even if it's found in only one chicken, industry practice dictates that the entire flock should be culled — agriculture-speak for killed. Some of those flocks consist of thousands, even millions, of birds. That has translated into a grim toll: More than 174 million poultry, including commercially farmed chicken and backyard flocks, have died or been killed because of bird flu, according to a CDC estimate. The abrupt drop in supply contributes to price increases.
However, only 12 instances of bird flu were detected in May 2025, according to the USDA, and the agency said it hasn't been detected in any flock in California since February.

Members of the Trump administration laid out a number of potential policy changes to tackle the bird flu epidemic: increasing imports, boosting biosecurity and exploring vaccination. Sumner dismissed the foreign imports as 'publicity' and said the other suggestions haven't been put into effect at a broad scale since Trump took office.
'There have been no significant changes to egg policy,' he said.
The other two pieces of the pricing puzzle relate to how grocery stores get eggs to put on the shelves and how egg demand works compared with other products.
Grocery stores typically have contracts with specific farms to get their eggs, Sumner said. If the egg farmer can't perform — in other words, if they have no eggs to sell because they've culled their herd because of an outbreak — the contract usually lets the retailer find another source for eggs. So grocery store chains have been able to use alternative providers. At the same time, farmers that did have to cull their herds have now had enough time to restart their flocks: Chickens can begin laying eggs when they're around 4 months old.
Egg demand is typically known as inelastic — it doesn't change much. That's because there aren't a ton of good substitutes for eggs, Sumner said. Though bird flu can hit a flock of chickens being raised for meat as easily as it can hit a flock of egg-layers, we haven't seen the same price surge in chicken breasts and thighs as we have for eggs.
Sumner said to think of the difference like this: If chicken meat goes up in price, grocery shoppers will swap in pork, beef, beans, tofu or other protein sources. But it's tricky to find a suitable one-to-one substitute for eggs in a baking recipe or an omelette. That's part of why shoppers have been so sensitive to the price of eggs.
That said, persistent high prices have curbed some of America's appetite for eggs. A recent report on the egg market from the USDA described consumer demand as 'lackluster' and 'sluggish.'
People have found alternatives. This year, Sumner said, his grandchildren's Easter eggs were the plastic variety.