Video transcript
All right. Welcome back. You know, in other news, which happens to be good and also interesting, how about this? Walmart and Eagle have lowered prices and Piggly Wiggly specifically announced last week it's affordable protein initiative. A P I is reinforcing the company's commitment to provide fresh, high quality meat at an exceptional value. It seems like I'm doing a commercial through strategic manufacturer partnerships, fresh in-store meat operations. It's proprietary power buying program and it's cost plus 10% pricing philosophy. Piggly Wiggly is helping customers save on the products families purchase most. It does sound like a commercial. Here's what they say. Our mission has always been simple. As Kevin McDaniel, deliver the highest quality fresh meat at the best value possible. Every decision we make from negotiating with the manufacturer to cutting fresh beef and our pork in our stores, packaging fresh poultry and pricing our products is centered on creating value for the families who trust Piggly Wiggly the most. All right. But why now? Why are they lowering them now? Why are retailers going and making this effort? I think affordable protein initiative would probably make the argument that policy changes are creating an environment where retailers are feeling that they can lower prices and still make their margins. I don't know. To talk more about this and the timing of it, please welcome to the show Mr. TJ Wilson. He's with the American First Policy Institute. Thanks for coming on, brother. I mean, that is a good question, right? Why are they doing it? And why are they doing it now? It's a great question. You know, I think you have to start with there being three ways to govern in situations like this where prices are high. You can govern like the last administration where there's runaway inflation, there's runaway prices, there's runaway input costs, there's no new market expansions in the form of trade deals, and you basically do nothing. That's one way to govern. There's another way to govern that we've seen of late right in New York City, where you have folks like Mayor Mondani who have this idea of government run grocery stores. And what those do is, you know, they make us collect our groceries in the same way we stand in line at the DMV, no selection, no service, no quality, and all the private businesses leave. Or really, you can govern the way that we're seeing the Trump administration govern, which is, you know, where there's a strategic slog of long investments in time to deregulate in both a surgical manner and at Trump speed, frankly. And, you know, we're starting to see those sort of macro, large scale costs that are coming down in the economy, and they're reducing everything from the cost of refrigeration to energy that cuts across the whole economy to input costs. I mean, look at the price of natural gas, look at the price of fuel, you know, you can see it really across the whole economy. And so it's a lot of hard work that's going on by President Trump, by Secretary Rollins, by the rest of the cabinet, to lean into this problem from day one, you know, and we're starting to see the results. Egg prices don't come down by 90% because of charity or accident. You know, and you've seen that now there's double digits with other proteins with other staples. So it's really promising news. And, you know, I think it's really going to be hay in the barn. A lot of this work that's going on as we turn to the fall and the winter. Yeah, because it because in the fall, we all know November the fifth, it's going to be about affordability, right? And this goes, I would think a long way towards that affordability issue, right? And I guess my question is, is that how is he strong armoring us? How is he getting these folks to lean in with him to bring these prices down? What's in it for them? Well, it's a good question. I think folks forget that President Trump is the only president we've had in decades, to my knowledge, that started and ran large businesses, very successful large businesses. And in a lot of ways, he leads from the front in that way. And we see that with the way that he talks to these companies with the ways that he holds them accountable, frankly, for when the macros are trending lower, which is what we're seeing. And, you know, it's not acceptable to not pass those savings onto consumers. And frankly, we've got a lot of patriotic companies that you've seen cut prices and pass those savings that are systemic along the consumer. So, you know, I think he leads from the front, I think he also, you know, provides a lot of certainty to folks, we all know that that's the key, the key piece of this right before prices get cut, there's got to be certainty that, you know, we're not going to get whiplash. So well, so the last thing that really one of the last things, but it's probably the biggest and you probably know what I'm going to say, but he needs to have come his way. And in line with what he's doing here with these retailers is, is that energy price, oil prices, that's going to be kind of the fly in the heart one here in the short term. And I say short term because I do believe he understands that it definitely will be over. And obviously the sooner, the better. And the trade off is, and I've said this a hundred times on this show, at least we're getting something for this higher inflation. And today it came in rather benign and it's going in the right direction. But we had 9.1% CPI in June of 2022 under under Joe Biden. And what did we get from that? Did we disarm any big terrorist country in the world for that? No, we had, we had to pay a tax and we got nothing for it. At least with this small tax, and we're still not as high as the prices were under his government, we're getting something for these higher prices. And I think that we need to make sure that that message gets out. I think you're right. And you know, there are prices were up stunningly 25% food prices were up 25% during the last administration. That is an incredible amount of money on average across all goods, some goods. Oh, yeah, some goods were multi, you know, hundreds of percent side, you know, multiple, multiple times higher. You know, and so folks forget this, it takes a lot of hard work in the trenches, thousands of hours from the cabinet, from, you know, pitch patriotic folks that are serving the administration that are leaning on these companies that are doing the slashing and you know, strategic surgical cutting to regulations and otherwise to bring down these costs, you know, I mean, these are where America last policies that that took time to sort of slash and gash and we're thankfully getting there. Yeah, I totally agree. Great stuff. You know, to your point about the 25% I heard that I hear that number all the time. But you want to tell me that what you know, $100 worth of groceries in 2020 was only worth 125 in 2024. Ask anybody's wife, they'll tell you no way on God's green earth. It's more like 160 bucks, 170 bucks. And I agree with that too. So I think that 25% that everybody still uses and I use it too, is really not reflective. But TJ, always love having you on you always bring us some great stuff. That was a great idea. I appreciate you that that story was very interesting. We'll see how it all comes out. We'll get that oil price down on the way we go, but I appreciate you coming on the show super
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