On January 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided the country needed clarity on a pressing national issue. No, it’s not food insecurity, farm consolidation, or inflation. It’s milk. Specifically, whole milk. For that, USDA posted a black-and-white image of Donald Trump leaning over the Resolute Desk with a milk mustache.
One glance at the image, and it’s clear;y styled like a revival of the old “Got Milk?” campaign. The caption declared: “The Milk Mustache Is Back. Drink Whole Milk.” Understandably, the internet stopped breathing for a second. And this wasn’t from a parody account. Apparently, the Trump administration has taken it upon itself to make the president a laughing stock, unknowingly.
The post was part of the announcement that whole milk would be reinstated as an option in federal nutrition programs. It reverses Obama and Biden-era nutritional guidelines, which emphasized low-fat or skim milk for health reasons. The USDA framed the shift as restoring “choice.” The policy justification was fine. But the delivery is where it got hilarious.
The image itself is unmistakably stylized. Trump stares sternly, fists planted on the desk, flags blurred behind him, a full glass of milk placed dead center. Above him: “The Milk Mustache Is Back.” Below him: “Drink Whole Milk.” The image is not informational. It is state-produced political imagery designed to brand a dietary policy around the president’s face.
The milk mustache Trump looks strikingly like… someone
Users on X were either confused or rolling with laughter. “Bro, I need context,” one wrote, confused about “what does this have to do with anything.” Another bluntly asked, “What the f—k is going on,” speaking for most of the internet. But a few users saw something else behind the milk mustache.
“You put the wrong mustache on him,” one wrote, taking a jab at the administration’s recent comfort with authoritarian aesthetics and symbolism. “Let us maybe stay away from the mustache,” another pleaded in that context. The USDA defended the post as an attempt to highlight the policy change in a “lighthearted” way (via USA Today). But this wasn’t a cartoon cow or a nutritional chart. It was the president, framed heroically, with a milk mustache. It wasn’t quirky; it reads more as deranged institutional branding.
One user joked that Trump looked like he was “about to lecture me on diabeetus.” The milk mustache has itself become a flashpoint. In isolation, it’s harmless. But coming from an administration already criticized for flirting with authoritarian aesthetics, it triggered discomfort. The GOP is wrapped in controversies around Nazi symbolism. Yet, they seem intent on repeating those visual mistakes.
Nothing about this post was necessary. Nothing about it improved public understanding or clarified nutritional guidance. The only thing it did was leave people staring at their phones, wondering where it all went wrong.
Let’s set aside the controversy over what Walmart’s shrinkflation of its annual Thanksgiving feast bundle might suggest for the recent trajectory of grocery prices. The good news for which we can be thankful is that the share of their incomes that average Americans devote to paying for food has fallen steeply over the last 100 years.
Human Progress
This happy development stems from two long-term trends: rising incomes and falling food prices.
In 1929, Americans spent 23.4 percent of their after tax-personal disposable income buying food, reported the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2006. In 1929, food eaten at home accounted for 17 percent of food expenditures.
At the aggregate level, a crude calculation finds that in 1960, 11.4 percent of total GDP was spent on purchasing food for personal consumption. In 2025 that has fallen to 5.1 percent of GDP. Basically, as their incomes rise, Americans spend more money on food but it represents a smaller share of their income, and the proportion spent on nonfood items increases. Real U.S. disposal income per capita has increased from $13,500 in 1960 to nearly $53,000 today. After tax, personal disposable income hovers just above 70 percent of total GDP.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirms these declining trends using different calculations.
USDA, Economic Research Service
The agency reports, “In 2024, U.S. consumers spent an average of 10.4 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food, a decrease from 10.6 percent in 2023.” Americans spend 4.9 percent of their incomes on food at home and 5.5 percent on food away from home, such as dining out at restaurants.
What about the price of foods? As Americans all too well know, the USDA reports that food prices rose by 23.6 percent between 2020 and 2024. Grocery prices do bounce around, especially during periods of high inflation like what we have recently been enduring. Nevertheless, the century-long trend has been falling prices for food staples, as shown by combining selected deflated Bureau of Labor Statistics and Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data on food prices.
Author
While Americans on average devote just over 10 percent of their disposable incomes to food, those in the lowest income quintile spend just under 33 percent of their incomes on food.
USDA, Economic Research Service
As high as that percentage is, families in the lowest quintile were spending around 58 percent of their after-tax income on food as recently as the early 1980s.
As we gather for our holiday feasts, let us take a moment to appreciate that, over the past century, steady gains in productivity, innovation, and economic growth have allowed families to devote a smaller and smaller share of their budgets to putting food on the table. That is truly an achievement worth celebrating this Thanksgiving.
The Trump administration has released all withheld funds for November SNAP benefits to states for distribution, while new work requirements are set to change the program for many of its 42 million participants.SNAP participants should receive their December benefits according to their normal schedule, but now, there’s an extra step beneficiaries need to take to receive this assistance. President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” expanded requirements for many SNAP recipients to work, volunteer, or participate in job training for at least 80 hours a month. The law also expands the age limit of people who need to meet these requirements from 54 to 64. People who do not meet these rules can be exempt for up to 3 months during a 3-year period. The new requirements took effect when the law was signed in July and were suspended for November amid the government shutdown, meaning December will be the first time many face enforcement of the new standards. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the new requirements are expected to reduce the average monthly number of SNAP recipients by about 2.4 million people over the next 10 years.”I think we’re looking forward to USDA to having a broad-based discussion to ensure that every dollar that we spend here goes to someone who legally qualifies for the program and is actually in need,” said Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden.Under federal law, most households must report their income and basic information every four to six months and be fully recertified for SNAP at least every year. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested SNAP recipients should be required to reapply, though it is unclear whether she is proposing adding an additional step to what’s already in place.Rollins said the Agriculture Department asked states to send in SNAP data. She says they received information from 29 states and found that 186,000 deceased men, women and children were receiving a check for SNAP benefits. Rollins noted 120 Americans have been arrested for SNAP fraud and added half a million people were receiving benefits twice. The secretary says structural changes to SNAP will be announced after Thanksgiving. Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4=
WASHINGTON —
The Trump administration has released all withheld funds for November SNAP benefits to states for distribution, while new work requirements are set to change the program for many of its 42 million participants.
SNAP participants should receive their December benefits according to their normal schedule, but now, there’s an extra step beneficiaries need to take to receive this assistance.
President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” expanded requirements for many SNAP recipients to work, volunteer, or participate in job training for at least 80 hours a month. The law also expands the age limit of people who need to meet these requirements from 54 to 64.
People who do not meet these rules can be exempt for up to 3 months during a 3-year period. The new requirements took effect when the law was signed in July and were suspended for November amid the government shutdown, meaning December will be the first time many face enforcement of the new standards.
“I think we’re looking forward to USDA to having a broad-based discussion to ensure that every dollar that we spend here goes to someone who legally qualifies for the program and is actually in need,” said Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden.
Under federal law, most households must report their income and basic information every four to six months and be fully recertified for SNAP at least every year.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested SNAP recipients should be required to reapply, though it is unclear whether she is proposing adding an additional step to what’s already in place.
Rollins said the Agriculture Department asked states to send in SNAP data. She says they received information from 29 states and found that 186,000 deceased men, women and children were receiving a check for SNAP benefits. Rollins noted 120 Americans have been arrested for SNAP fraud and added half a million people were receiving benefits twice.
The secretary says structural changes to SNAP will be announced after Thanksgiving.
Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not go out on November 1, raising the stakes for families nationwide as the government shutdown drags on.
The new notice comes after the Trump administration said it would not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November. That program helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries.
“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the USDA notice says. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued on November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”
The shutdown, which began Oct. 1, is now the second-longest on record. While the Republican administration took steps leading up to the shutdown to ensure SNAP benefits were paid this month, the cutoff would expand the impact of the impasse to a wider swath of Americans – and some of those most in need – unless a political resolution is found in just a few days.
The administration blames Democrats, who say they will not agree to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate with them on extending expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans say Democrats must first agree to reopen the government before negotiations.
Democratic lawmakers have written to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting to use contingency funds to cover the bulk of next month’s benefits.
But a USDA memo that surfaced Friday says “contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits.” The document says the money is reserved for things like helping people in disaster areas.
It cited a storm named Melissa, which has strengthened into a major hurricane, as an example of why it’s important to have the money available to mobilize quickly in the event of a disaster.
The prospect of families not receiving food aid has deeply concerned states run by both parties.
Some states have pledged to keep SNAP benefits flowing even if the federal program halts payments, but there are questions about whether U.S. government directives may allow that to happen. The USDA memo also says states would not be reimbursed for temporarily picking up the cost.
Other states are telling SNAP recipients to be ready for the benefits to stop. Arkansas and Oklahoma, for example, are advising recipients to identify food pantries and other groups that help with food.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accused Republicans and Trump of not agreeing to negotiate.
“The reality is, if they sat down to try to negotiate, we could probably come up with something pretty quickly,” Murphy said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We could open up the government on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there wouldn’t be any crisis in the food stamp program.”
As the government shutdown continues, government agencies like the Social Security Administration and programs like Medicaidhave been fielding questions about whether the money that Americans rely on will continue to flow.
Thankfully, for many families, one piece of the puzzle has so far not been in question.School districts around the country have put out messages reassuring families that the National School Lunch Program, which provides low-cost or free nutritious meals to schoolchildren, will continue — for now.
November will be a different story.
More than 700,000 federal workers have been sent home while the government has ceased operations. Among them are some 43,000-plus workers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the country’s school nutrition programs. Typically, school districts pay for school lunches and then are reimbursed by the government. But without a funding agreement, the government isn’t able to spend money on many programs it normally funds, like school lunches.
In its shutdown contingency plan, USDA says funds for school lunches are available throughOctober. But advocates say it’s unclear what happens next month.
“If schools aren’t getting reimbursed, the reality is they might not be able to continue these programs,” Clarissa Hayes, the deputy director of the child nutrition programs and policy at the Food Research and Action Center, told HuffPost.
The government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, has no clear end in sight as Democrats and Republicans engage in a standoff over cuts to health care. Neither side has a particular reason to fold: Democrats are still dealing with the political backlash from the last time they agreed to a Republican budget bill without demanding concessions, while Republicans are using the opportunity to pursue government cuts on their agenda. But as the government remains in stasis, how to feed hungry kids becomes a pressing question.
“Not all schools can keep their programs afloat. October feels safe. November is a big question mark,” Hayes told HuffPost.
To make matters more complicated, some schools were already short of funds. “We had heard from several State agencies that didn’t have adequate funding to cover October’s meals,” Diane Pratt-Heavner, the director of communications at the School Nutrition Association, a nonprofit that represents the professionals who provide school meals, said in an emailed statement to HuffPost. After those states reached out to SNA for help, the organization was able to get USDA funding for them.
“As the government remains in stasis, how to feed hungry kids becomes a pressing question.”
School lunches are a critical lifeline for kids and their families. There is ample evidence that school lunches are an important resource and that well-fed kids perform better academically, enjoy better mental health and have fewer behavioral issues.
School lunches are particularly crucial for students from families dealing with food insecurity — according to SNA, around 1 in 5 American children live in households “without consistent access to adequate food.” Reliable, school-provided meals can be a vital resource for kids who otherwise struggle to get enough food or food that meets their nutritional needs.
Hayes doesn’t anticipate the complete cancellation of meals. “Schools won’t completely end their food service,” she said. “But maybe they will streamline their menus and have fewer offerings.” More limited options could also mean a more limited benefit: For some children, school meals are the only nutritious meals they receive each day.
Experts say there are some options for schools, should reimbursements get delayed, as the shutdown drags on. Districts can pull funds from other programs that maybe don’t need to be funded right away or rely on state agencies for resources. But that’s easier said than done.
“In districts that have fewer resources, especially in rural areas, it could be a significant challenge as to where they can find more resources,” Weadé James, the senior director of K-12 policy at the Center for American Progress, told HuffPost. “Every district doesn’t have the luxury of having those reserves.”
Rural schools have unique funding challenges due to factors like a smaller tax base and lower student enrollment increasing the cost per pupil to keep a school open. While schools get funding based on the number of pupils they enroll, many overhead costs, like staff salaries and utility services, remain the same no matter how many students are in the building.
About 20% of K-12 public school students in the U.S. attend rural schools, according to CAP, and nearly half of those students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. As of 2022, 17% of all rural school students — 1.7 million — attended “high poverty” schools, where more than 75% of students were eligible for free or reduced-price meals.
Partnering with food banks is another option, James said. “But food banks are stretched thin, too.”
The threats to school lunch come at a time when there’s a broader fear of food insecurity around the country. Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut $500 million in USDA grants that typically went to support food banks. It also ended a pandemic-era program that partnered schools with local farms to provide free meals.
Then there’s the fact that the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill also calls for drastic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as food stamps, meaning there may soon be an influx of more people who need food banks to make ends meet.
“It’s a perfect storm,” Hayes said. “There are historic cuts to SNAP coming. Food banks are getting a lot more people.” Local governments are also preparing for a surge of federal workers using food banks to help feed their families as they go without a paycheck.
Schools could also look to local farms for help with supplemental school lunch, but the entire agriculture industry has been suffering from Trump’s policies. “It’s going to make it even more difficult for school districts to partner with local farms when that industry itself is struggling,” James said.
Students at Peres Elementary School pick up organic meals for lunch in Richmond, California, on Feb. 2, 2017. In a one-week pilot program, Conscious Kitchen partnered with the West Contra Costa Unified School District to serve organic meals made from scratch using ingredients sourced from local farms.
Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group
A lot of the uncertainty facing the school lunch programs could be solved, of course, by Congress passing a funding bill and reopening the government. But there’s little sign that lawmakers are close to doing that.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has already said that this could be the longest government shutdown in history, surpassing the previous longest, the 35-day shutdown that ran from late 2018 to early 2019. During that closure, there was no disruption to school lunches because the USDA had back-up funding ready to go.
But this Trump term has been significantly different. The administration has spent the last nine months trampling norms, bucking tradition and illegally withholding funds.
It wouldn’t be the first time public schools are left to scramble under the Trump administration. In June, the federal government sent letters to every state notifying them that the Department of Education would be freezing $7 billion in funds to public schools while it ensured that schools were complying with Trump’s mandates. The freeze sent schools into a panic, unsure if they’d have to lay off staff or cut critical programs for students. After an outcry and legal threats, the administration released the funds.
During this shutdown, Trump has made sure his priorities, like immigration enforcement and trade policies, can continue despite the funding lapse. But there’s no sign that USDA and its food programs fall under that umbrella.
Right now, the uncertainty is the only sure thing. “The question is, what happens if [the shutdown] continues through November?” Hayes said. “Many of us aren’t quite sure.”
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Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.
Few things are more difficult to eradicate in our system of modern governance than a government-sanctioned monopoly or oligopoly. A recently passed bill in Tennessee, which will allow the state’s alcohol wholesalers to take over hemp distribution in the state, shows that these monopolies are not only difficult to eliminate but also often attempt to expand their reach.
The new law sets up a distribution system for hemp—which was legalized at the federal level in the 2018 Farm Bill—that mirrors the notorious three-tier system for alcohol distribution, which requires producers, wholesalers, and retailers to be legally separate entities. The three-tier system restricts producers and suppliers from selling directly to their customers and mandates that they work through a wholesaler to reach the market. This allows wholesalers to operate as functional monopolies or oligopolies in certain parts of states where only one or two wholesalers operate.
The law, which takes effect on January 1, 2026, also requires all wholesalers and retailers of hemp products to maintain a physical presence within the state. Out-of-state hemp suppliers will be prohibited from engaging in direct-to-consumer shipping to customers in Tennessee, and instead will be forced to work through the state’s wholesaler and retailer tiers. While in-state Tennessee hemp suppliers cannot ship their products to Tennesseans either, they are able to sell on-site directly to their customers, providing a workaround to avoid the three-tier system.
Cornbread Hemp, a Kentucky hemp supplier that recorded $1 million in Tennessee-based sales last year, is challenging the new law in federal court. Cornbread Hemp argues that Tennessee’s law unconstitutionally discriminates against out-of-state competitors in favor of in-state businesses, which is a violation of the Constitution’s Dormant Commerce Clause.
Supreme Court observers will recognize how closely the case mirrors Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas(2019). In the case, the majority struck down Tennessee’s requirement that applicants for alcohol wholesaling or retailing licenses must have resided in the state for over two years, finding it to be unconstitutional discrimination against out-of-state economic interests.
Tennessee’s constitutional rationale for residency requirements in the hemp context is even weaker than with alcohol. The main constitutional defense in support of residency requirements for alcohol is that the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, devolved alcohol regulation back down to the state and local level. States, therefore, argue that the Constitution’s recognition of state power in the alcohol arena should inoculate residency clauses from Dormant Commerce Clause challenges. While some lower courts have continued to buy this argument, the Supreme Court has refused to go along in recent decades.
As liquor attorney Sean O’Leary notes, the 21st Amendment allows a discriminatory state law in the alcohol context to face a lower level of constitutional scrutiny than a non-alcohol law. The argument essentially boils down to: Alcohol is uniquely treated under the U.S. Constitution. Hemp has no corollary to the 21st Amendment, meaning a discriminatory hemp law will face a higher level of constitutional scrutiny.
Now alcohol wholesalers—already a government-sanctioned oligopoly or monopoly in many locales—are trying to expand their control beyond alcohol. The new law makes this power grab particularly blatant, since it moves hemp from under the purview of the Tennessee Department of Agriculture to the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
In fact, this change was made “at the behest of the wholesaler lobby,” O’Leary notes. “The wholesaler’s goal is to mandate a three-tier system where they get a piece of the action.” He predicts that, given the power of the alcohol wholesaler lobby in state capitals across America, more state legislatures will be following Tennessee’s lead.
Thanksgiving week is a time to be grateful for the nutritional abundance you enjoy, and for many an appropriate time to think about how to help those who have so much less. A study released last month by the Cato Institute suggests that those who support U.S. government-to-foreign-government food delivery aid as the best means to ensure more abundant food access across the globe should think again.
The study, written by Chris Edwards, Colin Grabow, and Krit Chanwong, close-focuses on three specific food aid programs under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and details their overarching flaws. These problems include that “US food aid can undermine agriculture in recipient countries and exacerbate conflicts in strife‐torn regions. Even in situations where food aid can reduce hunger, shipping US food abroad is an expensive way to help poor countries, particularly because of cargo preference rules requiring the use of US‐flagged ships. It is also usually slower to ship US food to needy countries than to procure it locally near aid recipients.”
One program examined, Food for Peace, arose in 1954 mostly as a means to get rid of excess U.S. food production encouraged by government subsidies to American farmers. It involves direct shipping of food overseas, mostly for emergencies; the U.S. spent $2.28 billion on this in 2022. Another aid program, Food for Progress (2022 cost: $127 million), ships U.S. food abroad, not for direct giveaways to the hungry, but to be sold in foreign markets for cash that is then supposed to be used to help foreign development. A 2002 program known as McGovern-Dole (2022 cost: $193 million), as the Cato study explains, “donates food to schoolchildren and other groups in poor countries, while also helping countries expand their government food programs.”
The study details some of the problems with these seemingly unobjectionable schemes of hunger philanthropy. These include harming local farmers trying to sell their products by displacing them in the markets where they need to sell to survive. A 2017 study cited by the Cato authors, written by Simon Gao and Barrett E. Kirwan of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, called “Does U.S. Food Aid Crowdout Local Food Production?” found that “U.S. cereal aid reduces cereal production in recipient countries… In terms of food aid quantity, if the average amount of food aid were to double, food aid would increase by 70,832 metric tons (MT) and production in the recipient country would fall by 173,952 MT.”
Free food in certain foreign countries can just create a valuable thing to be fought over, militarily or in decisions about which elements in a country get cared for. As the Cato authors write:
In a statistical study covering the years 1971 to 2006 across 125 countries, Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian found that “an increase in US food aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts.” Nunn and Qian explain, “Because food aid is regularly transported across vast geographic territories, it is a particularly attractive target for armed factions.” Furthermore, “Governments that receive aid often target it to specific populations, excluding opposition groups or populations in potentially rebellious regions. This has been noted to increase hostilities and promote conflict.”
…The problem with the USDA’s aid programs is that they are rigidly based on shipping US‐sourced food that can be hijacked by warring parties and used to extend conflicts, which can be a counterproductive way to help troubled countries.
And far from being a quick way to deal with overseas food emergencies, “the lengthy amount of time needed for delivery reduces its usefulness. US food aid shipments typically take four to six months to reach destinations abroad.”
The authors point out that aid programs that procure food in markets near where it’s needed are far quicker and cheaper ways to deliver food aid, but are not beloved of domestic agricultural interests.
Policies designed to help domestic interests while supposedly meant to help hungry foreigners extend to how we deliver food aid overseas. As the study reports:
the Cargo Preference Act of 1954…requires that at least half the tonnage of government‐impelled cargo—including food aid—be shipped on US‐flagged vessels. Food for Peace, Food for Progress, and McGovern‐Dole must abide by these rules. Competition is limited among US‐flagged vessels, and they are about three times more expensive to operate than their foreign‐flagged counterparts.
According to economist Vincent Smith and Senator Jim Risch (R‑ID), the “overwhelming majority” of US food aid is transported on dry‐bulk ships. There are only four such ships in the US merchant fleet, three of which are owned by a single company. The GAO has pointed to the “very small pool” of US‐flagged vessels eligible to transport food aid, which “limits agencies’ selection and flexibility, and leads to inefficient choices of trade.” By mandating the use of expensive US ships, cargo preference rules result in higher taxpayer costs for aid programs….A USAID spokesperson at a 2019 hearing said that US‐flagged ships are “twice as expensive as normal vessels from other countries.”
The Cato scholars argue that a movement toward general international market liberalization is likely a more effective way to reduce world hunger than shipping food bought from U.S. farmers slowly across the sea on expensive ships, insisting that indeed freer markets have already demonstrated their effectiveness in that regard: “The average share of populations undernourished in the least‐free quartile of countries is 20 percent compared to the most‐free quartile at just 3 percent. To reduce hunger, poor nations should free their economies, and many nations have. Despite a recent reversal due to conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic, global hunger has plunged over the past half‐century as more countries have adopted market‐based economic policies,” something we can all be thankful for.
