High food prices were a big problem for the Biden administration. It will be interesting to see if the problem reoccurs under the new administration. Here’s Bloomberg, discussing a recent crackdown on illegal aliens in Florida:
The law, SB1718, requires businesses to use a federal system called E-verify to confirm that every employee can work legally in the US — or face $1,000-a-day fines. On Jan. 13, DeSantis proposed toughening the laws further by requiring county sheriffs to help federal agents arrest and detain migrants.
There’s a shortage of people willing to harvest fruit and vegetables — known as stoop work — and farmers fear it will worsen if Trump imposes a Florida-style crackdown across America.
“A lot of people left Florida for Georgia, north, scared,” DiMare said as he walked one of his fields this week. “Farmers had to let their crops rot.”
The article suggests that the expulsion of undocumented workers could lead to fruit and vegetable production moving to other countries, where labor costs are lower:
There’s a wave of populism currently sweeping the globe. But as noted in a previous post, populists face some uncomfortable trade-offs. It’s popular to expel undocumented workers. It’s popular to put tariffs on imports. It’s popular to run massive budget deficits. It’s popular to have expansionary monetary policies.
So what’s not popular? Inflation.
Housing is another area where rising prices have impacted living standards. It also happens to be an area where mass deportations could impact supply:
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and around 90% of them are of working age. Furthermore, undocumented workers account for nearly 14% of the construction workforce, according to the American Immigration Council, meaning Trump’s deportation plans could hit the sector hard.
Garland explained that if the proposed deportations happen, he expects the cost of labor and supplies for homebuilders would continue to rise, which may reduce the already slim supply of homes.
To be clear, none of this means that deporting undocumented workers is necessarily a bad idea. There are costs and benefits to almost any policy. But as President Biden discovered with his green energy policies, voters tend to focus more on the costs than the benefits. Something to think about.
