Egg gone. Trump take egg.
No, we haven’t hit our heads, forgotten how to use syntax, or reverted to caveman times.Â
The term “Trump take egg” is in fact a viral meme circulating online as U.S. consumers grapple with sky-high egg prices, an issue plaguing the U.S. in the midst of an avian flu outbreak. More than 166 million birds, 30 million of them egg-laying chickens, have been slaughtered to limit the virus’s spread when cases are found.Â
As egg prices are predicted to jump 41 per cent this year, and U.S. President Donald Trump breaks his campaign promise to bring down food costs on Day 1, frustrated people online are posting photos of staggering egg prices and empty shelves with three pithy words: Trump take egg.
Sometimes, the posts, many of them on Bluesky, just say “where egg?” Or, “egg gone.”
According to business media brand Fast Company, the first recorded “Trump take egg” post came from Michael Tae Sweeney, a film and television editor who wrote “Trump took egg. Egg gone” Feb. 4 on Bluesky above a shared image of empty store shelves.
Sweeney told Fast Company he was inspired after visiting a Costco in San Diego, where, “Every single cart besides mine already had two cartons of 60 eggs in it, the most you were allowed to buy in one trip.”
As Slate notes, the posts are mainly coming from Democrats and left-leaning commenters, and the truncated syntax “is intended to convey that blaming the president for egg shortages is the kind of uncomplicated, visceral strategy that Democrats can use to reach voters.”
“People are going to the store. They can’t find eggs,” Rep. Haley Stevens said in a video posted to social media Feb. 18.
“I see this commander in chief doing all these press conferences about every revenge and tactic and different type of endeavour for the federal government. What are we doing about the costs?”
Prices expected to soar 41%, with Easter on the way
The U.S. Agriculture Department predicts record egg prices could soar more 41.1 per cent in 2025. Prices already hit an all-time average high of $4.95 US per dozen this month, or about $7.15 Cdn.
And the average prices conceal just how bad the situation is, with consumers paying more than a dollar per egg — over $12 US a dozen (more than $17 Cdn) — in some places. Egg prices also normally increase every spring heading into Easter when demand is high.
Prices have more than doubled since before the outbreak began, costing consumers at least $1.4 billion US last year, according to an estimate by agricultural economists at the University of Arkansas. Restaurants like Denny’s and Waffle House started adding surcharges to egg dishes.
The New York Times’ most recent cooking newsletter featured entirely egg-less versions of recipes, noting that “chicken egg prices are rising to luxury food levels.”
There have also been a spike in egg thefts. Earlier in the month, someone stole 100,000 organic eggs valued at about $40,000 US ($57,000 Cdn), off the back of a distribution trailer in Pennsylvania. A few weeks later, thieves struck a cafe in Seattle, making away with 540 eggs.
Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in El Paso, Texas, have stopped at least 90 people from attempting to smuggle raw eggs into the country from Mexico since January, the agency said in a news release Feb. 21.
Experts have previously told CBC News that Canada will probably not see a similar spike, due to its smaller farms and resilient supply management system. In Canada the price of a dozen eggs was about $4.75 Cdn in December, according to Statistics Canada.
The price for a carton of eggs has remained relatively stable in Canada, despite high egg prices afflicting the U.S. in the midst of an avian flu outbreak. Experts say that’s because of smaller Canadian farms and how outbreaks are managed here.
Will Trump give egg?
“It feels like people are eating gold now,” Denise McCarrick, the owner of Nancy’s Diner in Grafton, Ohio, told CBC Radio’s The Current last week.
The diner mostly serves breakfast, McCarrick said, and the hottest item on the menu is omelettes. But these days a case of 15 dozen wholesale eggs costs her about about $195 Cdn, compared to $115 a few months ago and around $87Â this time last year.
McCarrick says she has little hope that Trump’s Day 1 promise to lower food prices is actually going to happen.
“I mean, regardless of where you sit politically, you know, you always hope for the best. But it’s not really something that I’m planning on. He does like to speak in a lot of hyperbole.”
The Current14:55U.S. eggs are so expensive it feels like ‘eating gold’
Egg prices are now so high in the U.S. that Ohio diner owner Denise McCarrick says it feels like her customers are eating gold. We look at how avian flu is helping to drive up those prices, plus what it means for business — and for breakfast — when omelettes become a luxury item.Â
The Trump administration offered the first new details Wednesday about its plan to battle bird flu and ease costs.
With an emphasis on farms tightening their measures to prevent bird flu’s spread, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the USDA will invest another $1 billion US on top of the roughly $2 billion it has already spent since the outbreak began in 2022.
Rollins acknowledged that it will take some time before consumers see an effect at the checkout counter. It takes infected farms months to dispose of the carcasses, sanitize their farms and raise new birds. But she expressed optimism that the plan will help prices.
Meanwhile, in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal Thursday, Rollins wrote that, as part of their five-point plan to bring down egg prices, they “will consider temporary import options to reduce egg costs in the short term.”
Which could get awkward, given that today Trump said a 25 per cent tariff on most Canadian goods is coming March 4.