US should reflect on its tariffs-and-egg dilemma

A US Department of Agriculture report on March 14 says national average wholesale egg prices have been "steadily declining", but on social networking sites a number of people in the United States are still complaining about the high prices of eggs in supermarkets.

Maybe it takes time for supermarkets, which buy eggs from wholesale markets, to adjust their prices for consumers. Or maybe real-time egg prices vary from place to place and it's too early to say that the egg price crisis in the US is over.

Whatever the case, the high egg prices should remind the US government that no country can alone produce enough to take care of the needs of all inhabitants on Earth. International trade remains an essential, effective way of balancing different countries' needs and products. That is like the ABC of economics and there is reason enough to believe the US leaders know it, as they have asked European countries, including Denmark, to export more eggs to the US. Yes, the same Denmark, from which the US had earlier threatened to annex Greenland.

The US leadership seems ignorant of the fact that imposing tariffs will only curb cross-border trade and push up costs, harming its own consumers. It's rather absurd the US asks countries to export more eggs on one occasion and threatens to impose more tariffs on the other, as the two measures are, in essence, contradictory.

People of the US know better than their government perhaps. According to US Customs and Border Protection data, by mid-March "significantly more egg products" were seized at US borders "than the number of seizures of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl". Before the US leadership wields the tariffs baton again, it should listen to the voice of its own people and slash tariffs so that US citizens can buy affordable eggs without needing to smuggle them into the country.