Never mind 'let them eat broccoli': this key sign shows Trump's economy is on the brink

I spent more than two decades in public relations, including stints as media relations director for four of the largest retailers in the United States. One thing you learn is how to read the tea leaves. When corporate planners tell you that prices are going down across the board, that means the economy is about to sour.

There is nothing — nothing — worse for retailers than a pricing war. Price cuts aren’t generosity for customers. They’re all about survival for the brand.

So when I watched Good Morning America talk about how fast-food chains are locked in a $4 value-meal war, my stomach dropped. And it wasn’t because I was hungry. Those meals were $5 not that long ago, in a former pricing war. A dollar shaved off at that level isn’t innovation, it’s desperation.

The $4 meal surely means an economic downturn is imminent.

The very same day, Trump’s agriculture secretary, Brook Rollins, decided to go to war with a $3 meal of her own.

Speaking to NewsNation, Rollins proudly explained that her department has run more than 1,000 “simulations” and concluded that Americans can be fed for about $3 a meal.

As she put it — and yes, this is a direct quote — “It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, you know, a corn tortilla and one other thing. So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money.”

Coincidentally or not, on top of the government’s new inverted food pyramid sits that enviable one piece of broccoli.

At this rate, fast-food chains may need to do their own “simulations” to come up with a $3 meal. After all, how do you undercut a single floret? Funny, yes, but it’s no joke.

Because this didn’t start with broccoli. Back in May, Donald Trump told Americans they could cut costs by buying five pencils instead of 250 and three dolls instead of 30. People laughed, rightly, because it sounded unhinged and woefully out of touch. But it wasn’t a joke. It was a preview.

We’ve gone from five pencils and three dolls to one piece of broccoli. The numbers are shrinking because the economy is shrinking, and it’s about to get much worse than anyone in this administration is willing to admit.

Trump’s whacked-out tariffs are going to hit consumers hard and soon. That alone will jack up prices on a staggering range of products, including broccoli, dolls, pencils, and just about everything else that crosses a border. But that’s only one part of the squeeze.

Health-care costs are completely out of control, thanks in large part to GOP members of Congress who refused to act on Obamacare tax credits. So Americans are doing something truly dangerous. They are dropping their health insurance, or clinging to it while slashing spending elsewhere — cuts far more serious than toys or school supplies.

Meanwhile, members of Congress enjoy salad bars in House and Senate cafeterias, with overflowing quantities of broccoli. I know this because I love more than one piece of broccoli, and I worked there too.

Grocery prices, as we learned on Friday, are hovering near their 2022 peak, the spike that followed post-COVID shocks. Trump promised to lower grocery prices. Instead, he decided a $300 million White House ballroom was the priority, presumably so wealthy donors can dine on the finer things in life — like broccoli mousseline.

At the same time, Trump is on a “I’m king of the world” tour, trying to hoard oil from Venezuela and minerals from Greenland, rather than addressing soaring rent, clothing costs, car and housing prices, or basic household essentials.

And then there’s the “Big Beautiful Bill” tax cuts, which ensure Trump’s cronies at Mar-a-Lago won’t be eating broccoli at all. Broccoli is far too bourgeois. It also gets stuck in your teeth. They’ll be bathing in red, white, and blue caviar for America’s 250th birthday, while the rest of us pass a single tortilla round the table.

America is getting by by the seat of its pants. The fast-food price wars should terrify anyone paying attention. They are a harbinger. And if history holds, they signal a grinding halt followed by real suffering.

That’s why we’re down to one piece of broccoli.

The next numbers won’t just be smaller — they’ll be negative. As Americans sink deeper into debt and the economy slides, these jokes will transition into something far darker.

Food insecurity is a persistent and growing problem across the United States. There were 47.9 million people in food-insecure households in 2024. The numbers are especially high among Black and Latino families, single mothers, and people living in the South in both urban and rural areas. There are approximately 340 million people in the U.S., so you can do the math.

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura went viral this week when he said the U.S. is becoming a “Third World country.” The reason his video was shared far and wide is because so many Americans agree with him. In developing nations, nearly 300 million people face acute hunger. If Ventura is right, things will get far, far worse here. All fueled by authoritarianism.

If we’re heading toward a country where the military occupies our streets, abject poverty and hunger will be part of that picture. That’s the way it always goes. No exceptions.

People had fun with Trump’s pencils and dolls. They laughed at Rollins’s piece of broccoli. It won’t be funny six months from now, when the bottom drops out and the slide accelerates, and five pencils, three dolls and one piece of broccoli become unaffordable.

The Agriculture Department says it’s running “simulations.” That should worry all of us. Because if one piece of broccoli is today’s answer, I don’t want to know what the meal looks like six months from now.

• John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”