America faces another grocery-price shock

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.AMERICANS ARE not famous for their love of vegetables. The staples of American cuisine are starchy, cheesy and heavy on meat. One vegetable, though, sneaks into everything: the tomato.

Slices are tucked into burgers; canned ones become pizza sauce; further processing turns them into ketchup. Apart from the potato, of course, Americans eat more tomatoes than any other vegetable. Yet shoppers reaching for one at their grocery store may be experiencing a sense of déjà vu.

Tomato prices are almost 25% higher than they were a year ago. It is eggs all over again.Tomato prices are rising partly for idiosyncratic reasons. Some 90% of America’s imports of the vegetable come from Mexico.

In the middle of 2025 President Donald Trump withdrew from the “Tomato Suspension Agreement”—a bilateral arrangement managing imports of Mexican tomatoes—and imposed a 17% levy on them. But prices may keep climbing. Tomatoes, like other fresh produce, require fertiliser, the price of which has rocketed since war broke out with Iran.

Fuel costs are also starting to bite. How bad could the rise in grocery prices get?To understand how the energy shock will affect grocery bills, consider each step of the supply chain. Begin with farmers, who rely on fossil fuels.

Fertilisers, which typically use natural gas as a feedstock, account for as much as 40% of their input costs. Add to that the diesel needed to fuel their tractors. Producers of commodities like wheat and maize, however, have little control over their prices, which are determined by the balance of global supply and demand.