WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump suddenly criticized East price of groceries throughout his campaign, even delivering an address outside his New Jersey home in August, alongside a table covered in cereal boxes, coffee grounds and ketchup.

A wave of consumer discontent appears to have helped propel him back into the Oval Office, but Trump now faces the task of alleviating voter frustration.

Food inflation rose to a peak of more than 10% in 2022, but price increases slowed to around 2%, US Bureau of Labor Statistics show the data.

Still, years of runaway inflation have caused food prices to rise more than 25 percent since President Joe Biden took office.

Prices typically don’t fall across the board unless the economy slows or even goes into recession, which would reduce consumer demand but also impose economic hardship, some economists told ABC News.

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Still, Trump could adopt policies that could slow the rise in food prices or even reduce the cost of some household products, the economists added.

“Prices on various items could absolutely go down,” Michael Faulkender, a professor of finance at the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business, told ABC News.

In response to ABC News’ request for comment, Trump’s transition team said in a statement that Trump intends to follow through on the commitments he made during the campaign. But the transition team did not specifically address the issue of food prices.

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him the mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. It will be fulfilled.” Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the transition team, told ABC News.

Increase oil production

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On the campaign trail, Trump often responded to concerns about prices with a three-word mantra: “Drill, baby, work.”

Trump, who has played down human-caused climate change, has promised to bolster the oil and gas industry by easing regulations and expanding production.

In theory, rising oil production could lower food prices because gas is a key source of costs along the supply chain, whether a firm grows crops or transports them to a seller, economists said.

“Energy is a big input cost for food,” University of Miami economist David Andolfatto told ABC News. “This should put downward pressure on food prices.”

While such a move could prove beneficial, the rise in oil production under President Joe Biden has coincided with rising inflation in recent years. Because oil is sold on a global market, an increase in domestic production may not lower prices for American consumers as much as some would expect.

The US has set a record for crude oil production in 2023, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day, according to US Energy Information Administrationa federal agency.

A new increase in oil production risks accelerating the nation’s carbon emissions and worsening the impacts of climate change, which would drive costs down the road, Luis Cabral, an economics professor at New York University, told ABC News.

“We can’t just look at the benefits,” Cabral said, acknowledging the potential for lower food prices. “There are also significant costs in terms of emissions and climate change.”

Strengthen antitrust enforcement

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One approach to high food prices the Trump administration could crack down on is market concentration, a term economists use to describe the dominance of a particular industry by a handful of firms, some experts said.

They pointed to the market power of large corporations as a cause of rapid price increases, saying companies use their huge market role to raise prices without fear of a competitor offering a comparable product at a more affordable price.

“Whenever there are fewer players in an industry, prices tend to be higher,” Cabral said. “Supermarkets are no exception.”

Grocery store profit margins rose in 2021 and rose further two years later, even as price increases began to cool, a Federal Trade Commission the March study showed.

In February, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the merger of supermarket chains Kroger and Albertsons, which would be the largest supermarket merger in US history. Proceedings are ongoing and likely to expand into the Trump administration.

Some economists question the potential benefits of antitrust, saying the recent inflation crisis has coincided with a spike in production costs during the pandemic. “It’s hard to argue that it’s therefore some kind of profit,” Faulkender said.

Prohibition of price increases

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during the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris proposed a federal ban on food and grocery price gouging.

The plan could resemble price gouging bans in place in 37 states, which prohibit spikes in prices for scarce goods, the Harris campaign said. These bans prohibit companies from exploiting a sudden imbalance between supply and demand by significantly raising prices.

Although Trump may be reluctant to enact a policy proposed by his supporter, he could promote a price gouging ban as a means of preventing sharp price increases for certain goods.

For example, egg prices have skyrocketed by 30% in the year ending October, US Bureau of Statistics Wednesday’s data showed. The increase was primarily due to an outbreak of bird flu that decimated supply. Last year, egg prices rose more than 60% in response to a similar outbreak of bird flu.

Economists who spoke to ABC News were divided on the effectiveness of a potential price gouging ban.

Some economists have dismissed the policy as a flawed solution because state-level bans are usually triggered only in an emergency and, even then, often lack clarity about the type of company behavior that constitutes price gouging.

“I don’t think a federal price gouging ban would help at all,” Cabral said.

Andolfatto, of the University of Miami, said a price-gouging ban could lower food prices if it prevented prices from rising rapidly in certain circumstances. However, these benefits may be outweighed by the downside, as such a ban could override the market signal provided by prices, which helps direct the distribution of goods to places where they are in short supply.

“These types of interventions have unintended consequences,” Andolfatto said.