On July 6, President Trump posted that Walmart is 'lowering prices, by a lot, at my Administration's request to celebrate our great Country's 250th birthday,' and that the retailer would drop the price of a pound of ground beef 'by almost 15%, among many other products' [1]. Two things are off: the number and the cause.
Start with the number. Walmart's promotion cuts one pound of 73 percent ground beef to 5.94 dollars from 6.74 dollars [1]. That is about 12 percent on a single product, not almost 15 percent across the store, and it is a holiday sale of the kind retailers run every summer, not a price change made at the government's request. Walmart did not attribute it to any administration ask.
Now the cause. The national average price for a pound of ground beef was about 6.75 dollars in May 2026, a record high and up roughly 22 percent since January 2025 [2]. Beef is expensive for a reason that has nothing to do with a July 4 promotion: the US cattle herd is the smallest it has been in decades after years of drought and high feed costs, and rebuilding a herd takes three to four years [3]. That is a supply problem, and no store sale reverses it.
Data
| Jan 2021 | 3.97 dollars per pound |
|---|---|
| Jan 2025 | 5.55 dollars per pound |
| May 2026 | 6.75 dollars per pound |
A sale is a sale, and shoppers should take the cheaper beef. What they should not take is the story wrapped around it: that grocery prices are coming down by a lot at the president's direction. One product at one chain went on holiday markdown. The staple it belongs to is at its most expensive on record, for reasons a proclamation cannot touch.
