All prices skyrocketed under COVID for all sorts of reasons. Supply chains. Shut downs.
COVID ended but price increases never come back down all the way. Remember $4-5 gas under Obama and motor oil went from $3/qt to $6/qt? Gas prices came down but oil never did. Why?
Pre COVID OSB was $8-9/sheet. During COVID it went to $40/sheet. It’s currently $15/sheet. Why?
This was all pre tariff and has always been an ongoing thing. Use any excuse to increase prices temporarily and never bring them all the way back down.
We have a greed problem and consolidation/centralization problem causing lack of competition.
Why? Because they tested the market elasticity to higher prices and won. They found out even at higher prices they could still sell. What is more they made a hell of a lot more money for less effort. Two female auto execs stated their intention just about a year ago to keep inventory artificially low to inflate prices because they liked the shortage margins.
I spent 45 years in the oilfield. Went through two major Oil Country Tubular Goods tariff events. Prices went up but never came back down to anything close to what they had been when the tariff was lifted. Tariffs provide a means to test the market as a freebie and an excuse to keep prices high and facilitate that by pushing competition out.
Boom-bust cycles do about the same thing and I have seen 9 of those in that 45 years.
“…….after a prolonged drought that has impacted grazing lands and elevated feed expenses, forcing ranchers to reduce herd sizes.”
BS.
Biden’s (Obama’s sock puppet) policy makers kicked ranchers off federal lands for climate change crap reasoning.…like reducing cow farts.
The herds had less grass, the ranchers culled the herds to fit what little was left for grazing. Period.
Droughts come and go. They’ve yet to cause prices to triple in four years until the sock puppet. And it was all predicted. Remember comments four years ago about prices going up by 50% at the time? “Give it a couple years, they will be three and four hundred percent higher”
Yup.
Gasoline seems to be the only item that fluctuates wildly, groceries and other items seem to go up and say up. I remember when Coca Cola went up to 6¢ and the added a I cent coin box on the machines. I guess for a host of reasons they just raised the price to 10¢. Think about that, they were happy wit a penny increase but were forced to raise the price 5¢. As for now I don't have a clue but I can tell you that Sam's Cola tastes a lot better than it used to.