SPECIAL REPORT: Three Things You Should Know About The Trump Administration’s Food Policy Agenda and The Supreme Court Tariff Decision
The Trump Administration’s food policy is coming into sharper focus, and three threads are starting to converge: faster meat and poultry lines, a potential crackdown on GRAS and the tariff roll-backs
BREAKING NEWS:Trump’s tariffs just hit a wall at the Supreme Court—and the aftershock for food prices could be as disruptive as the tariffs themselves.
What the Court actually did
The Court ruled 6–3 that President Trump exceeded his authority by using emergency‑powers law to impose broad, unilateral tariffs on imports from most U.S. trading partners. The decision knocks out a “sweeping” set of global and so‑called “reciprocal” tariffs that had pushed average U.S. tariff rates to levels we haven’t seen in decades. Tariffs on steel and aluminum that rest on separate statutes are largely untouched—for now.
A big chunk of the Trump food‑price tax has just been ruled illegal.
How big the tariff tab really was
Tariffs were sold to the American public as a way to make “other countries pay.” The data show the opposite. A New York Fed–linked analysis found that as average U.S. tariffs jumped to roughly 13% in 2025 from under 3%, nearly 90% of the economic burden fell on U.S. businesses and consumers, not foreign exporters. A Yale‑affiliated budget model estimates that the 2025 tariff package, if fully in place, would push overall prices up roughly 2% or more over the next decade.
The White House did not take the Fed’s conclusion well. Kevin Hassett, Trump’s top economic adviser, blasted the New York Fed study in a CNBC interview, calling it “the worst paper” in the history of the Federal Reserve System and saying the researchers should “presumably be disciplined.” When senior officials talk about punishing central‑bank economists for publishing peer‑reviewed work that shows Americans are paying the tariffs, it sends a chilling message to us all.
From January to August 2025, U.S. consumers absorbed roughly 94% of the impact of the new tariffs, with foreign exporters shouldering just a sliver; even later in the year, around 86% of the tariff burden still showed up in higher import prices paid by American firms. As those higher costs move through the system into canned tomatoes, pasta, coffee, olive oil, snacks, packaging, and even store‑brand basics, retailers face pressure to increase shelf prices, trim promotions, or heaven forbid, succumb to ‘shrinkflation’.
A separate advocacy and research group, We Pay the Tariffs, calculated that American firms and households paid well over $100 billion in extra customs duties in 2025 alone, with the average effective tariff rate climbing nearly fivefold. That money didn’t vanish; it was embedded in the cost of canned tomatoes, olive oil, coffee, snacks, packaging, store‑brand basics—the center store of the supermarket.
The refund fight: what happens if companies win
Today’s ruling opens the door for thousands of importers that have already sued over the tariffs to say, in effect, “You broke the law—give us our money back.” If courts ultimately agree that duties collected under the now‑invalidated tariffs must be refunded, we’re talking about tens, possibly hundreds, of billions of dollars flowing from the Treasury back to wholesalers, manufacturers, and retailers. Costco, Revlon, Prada, Dole Fresh Fruit and Bumble Bee Foods are among the hundreds of companies who already filed cases against the administration so far – expect a lot more to follow!
Here’s what this all could mean for the industry and for shoppers:
Balance sheets first, prices later. Many of the companies that paid these tariffs used price increases, cost cuts, and margin compression to cope. Refund checks will partially repair those balance sheets and reward the legal risk of suing the government.
Uneven relief across categories. The biggest refunds will accrue where tariff exposure was highest: canned goods, specialty imports, coffee, olive oil, some snacks, metals‑intensive packaging, and equipment.
Intense pressure for “givebacks.” Consumer advocates, state attorneys general, and plaintiff lawyers will ask why companies can pocket tariff refunds that were funded by higher retail prices. Retailers and brands that keep all the money will face reputational risk and possibly legislation or settlements that nudge them toward some form of consumer relief…and further erode consumer trust.
Will refunds actually lower grocery prices?
This is the question your shoppers will be asking at the shelf. The honest answer: any price relief will be slow, partial, and highly strategic. Let’s not forget that tariffs are only part of the problem pushing up food prices: labor costs and climate change are also to blame.
Once list prices and promoted prices move up, they rarely come all the way back down, especially if shoppers have already adjusted their expectations. Retailers would rather layer in more deals and loyalty offers than roll back base prices across the board.
In categories where private label has gained real share especially snacks, canned goods, and center‑store staples, CPG brands may choose to pass through part of the refund in the form of sharper everyday prices or deeper promotions to win back volume. PepsiCo, for example, is already cutting recommended prices on Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos and other chips by up to nearly 15% after facing consumer pushback and volume declines. That comes a great news following the 2022 announcement that made national headlines that a bag of Doritos was reduced by roughly 5 chips, going from 9.75 ounces to 9.25 ounces. Looks like the company learned its lesson.
For shoppers, that means this decision is more likely to slow the upward drift in grocery prices than to deliver a broad rollback to pre‑tariff levels. You’ll see more “buy two, get one,” more digital coupons, more loyalty‑only offers, and surgical price moves in the most elastic categories, not a wholesale reset.
What retailers and brands should do
For retailers and CPGs, today’s ruling creates both risk and opportunity.
The smart play for retailers: treat any supplier refund or cost rollback as fuel for a visible “we’re lowering prices where it matters” campaign, especially on the highly shoppable, highly comparable items that define your price image including chips, pasta, canned goods, coffee, cooking oils. The smart play for brands: get in front of the narrative with transparent explanations of where you’re cutting prices and why, instead of waiting to be accused of keeping all the refund.
Today’s ruling removes one powerful source of future food‑price pressure, and that’s good news. Unless companies visibly share any tariff refunds with shoppers consumers will continue to feel that they paid the bill once and got ripped off again!
Speeding up slaughter lines
USDA has proposed rules that would significantly increase allowed line speeds in poultry and pork plants while stripping out key worker‑safety reporting requirements. In poultry, plants could run up to 175 chickens per minute instead of 140, and 60 turkeys per minute instead of 55; for pork, the proposal effectively removes line‑speed caps for eligible plants.
Critics, and I count myself as one of them, include everyone from food‑safety advocates to labor groups. I spent my early career working for my dad and spent a LOT of time in meat packing plants; and I can attest that faster lines with fewer inspectors and less worker‑safety oversight are a recipe for more contamination, more injuries, and more product recalls. USDA’s own studies show poultry workers already face elevated musculoskeletal risks, and opponents argue that ignoring that data to boost speeds “knowingly invites” a surge in injuries in what is already one of the country’s most dangerous industries.
For retailers and brands, this is a double‑edged sword. Yes, faster lines may temporarily hold down per‑pound processing costs, but any uptick in recalls, consumer distrust, or viral stories about plant injuries will land right in the middle of our supermarkets’ meat department. From a shopper perspective, the message this sends is problematic: we’re going to move your chicken and pork through the plant faster, with fewer inspectors, and trust that it all works out. It won’t!
RFK Jr., GRAS, and the future of ultra‑processed food
On February 15 Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared on CBS’ 60 Minutes that he essentially put the GRAS loophole on trial. GRAS or “generally recognized as safe” was created in 1958 so companies could use common ingredients without waiting for lengthy FDA approvals; over time, it has become the route by which thousands of ingredients entered the food supply with limited or no direct FDA review according to Kennedy.
He argued that ultra processed foods now make up roughly half of the American diet and that the GRAS exemption was “hijacked” by industry to flood the market with additives and refined carbohydrates that may be fueling an obesity and metabolic‑health crisis. Former FDA commissioner David Kessler (who I continue to admire) is petitioning the administration to revoke GRAS status for a range of refined sweeteners and starches including corn syrup, maltodextrin, dextrose, and high‑fructose corn syrup unless companies can prove they are safe and not driving obesity.
Kennedy says he intends to act on that petition and will apply “gold standard” science (how often have we heard the term bandied about in this administration – and I’m not talking about the gold leaf plastered in the Oval Office!) to revisit GRAS determinations, even as he emphasizes transparency rather than outright bans. For CPGs, that could mean:
New safety reviews, reformulation costs, and possibly the loss of some “cheap” ingredients.
Litigation risk, as San Francisco’s lawsuit against major ultra processed food makers over “addictive, dangerous products” shows where the legal winds are blowing and expect more cities and states to follow SF’s lead.
For our shoppers, the near‑term effect is likely confusion and label gobbledygook; more prominent warnings, new ingredient names, and a wave of “reformulated” SKUs. Longer term, if GRAS really is tightened, we could see a quiet but profound shift away from some ultra‑processed formulations and toward simpler recipes. That would be an upheaval for many legacy brands, but an opportunity for retailers and manufacturers who have already been investing in cleaner labels and a boon for shoppers.
How these threads intersect in the aisle
Any one of these moves, faster production lines, tighter GRAS regs and roll back of tariffs would be a big story. Together, they reshape the food chain.
On the production side, the administration is telling meat and poultry processors to run faster with less oversight, even as it contemplates making some of the cheapest “functional” ingredients in the ultra‑processed toolbox more legally and politically risky.
On the trade side, tariffs added friction and cost to global sourcing at the very moment retailers and brands needed flexibility to reformulate and shift supply. Today’s Supreme Court decision puts further pressure on companies and retailers, especially as the administration says they are going to fight the ruling and try to continue to support the president’s key economic policy.
For food companies, that means navigating a squeeze from multiple directions: labor and safety expectations in plants, regulatory scrutiny on ingredients, and trade policy.
For retailers, it means more volatility: more recalls to manage, more label changes to explain, more price resets and shopper frustration.
For shoppers, it’s going to feel like this: meat that may be a bit cheaper to process but not necessarily cheaper at the case; a steady drumbeat of news about “poison,” GRAS, and ultra processed foods; and a grocery bill that creeps up again in the back half of 2026, even after the constant headlines and statements about “cooling” inflation that the average American doesn’t really believe.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that these pressures can also accelerate changes many of us have been talking about for years. Smarter, safer processing that doesn’t simply mean “faster.” Ingredient lists that are understandable without a chemistry degree. Supply chains that are resilient not just to tariffs, but to climate and geopolitical shocks.
The question is whether the industry will treat this as a wake‑up call or is it just another round of short‑term fixes that leave shoppers paying more and trusting less.