The turkey on your Thanksgiving table is gobbling up a lot less money this year. In fact, retail turkey prices are hovering around $2.08 a pound, that’s down 11.9% from last year’s $2.36 a pound, even as grocery prices are up about 1.1% since last year. That’s according to Temple University economist Joshua Mask, who says that even as truckers and grocery store shelf-stockers are getting paid more this year, two things are different: The Covid-era supply chain disruptions are finally over, and last year’s bird-flu epidemic is gone and stocks are rebuilt. (Did you know that the average age of the turkey on your dinner table is only 5 to 7 months?)
The American Farm Bureau does its own survey, sending volunteer shoppers from all 50 states plus Puerto Rico to visit local grocery stores (or their websites) to price the items in a classic Thanksgiving dinner.
A gut-busting meal for 10 will run you $58.08, down 5% from last year, but still 19% higher than before Covid. As Farm Bureau economists Samantha Ayoub, Bernt Nelson, and Betty Resnick
report, the Thanksgiving grocery bill is “a mixed bag of savings and squeezes.” Prices dropped on turkey, sweet potatoes, frozen peas, carrots and celery, pumpkin pie mix, pie crusts, and whole milk. But dinner rolls, fresh cranberries, whipping cream, and cubed stuffing (a mortal sin in our house, where our friend Bob always makes it with oysters) rose in price. Add in some new favorites, including ham, russet potatoes, and frozen green beans, and the cost of the meal climbed to $77.34, or $7.73 per person, down 8.7% since last year.
The Farm Bureau’s research notes that the average 16-pound turkey accounts for 44.2% of the dinner’s cost, and clocks the decrease in turkey prices at 6% on average. While the avian flu would normally have pushed turkey prices up, the real secret to the price of birds dropping is falling demand. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates Americans are eating a whole pound less of turkey this year, down to 13.9 pounds per person annually.
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The Usual Suspects
- Mo’ Moana, Mo’ Money: Disney’s 2016 animated hit Moana, about a little girl from a Pacific island with big dreams and even bigger friends, has been the surprise hit of the streaming world. Last year it was the most-streamed movie in the world, and simultaneously the most-streamed movie ever. That’s an astounding turnaround for a movie that was 12th at the global box office when it was released, as the Wall Street Journal reports. Disney is hoping that magic will rub off this weekend, when Moana 2 opens in theaters, where it’s projected to sell $120 to $150 million in tickets in the U.S. and Canada. That would put this Thanksgiving weekend on track for more than $200 million, the second largest Thanksgiving box office weekend in movie history.
- Putting the “De” in DEI: Fearing a boycott from conservative voters, Walmart is pulling back on its DEI efforts, most notably ending its Center for Racial Equality, which has handed out $100 million in grants over five years. And it won’t use the term “DEI” in official communications. Anto-DEI activist Robby Starbuck took credit for the changes, saying he’d warned America’s biggest retailer that he was preparing a report on its wokeness. Frank Dobbin, a DEI expert at Harvard, said the pullback will hurt Walmart. “I think this will have an unfortunate effect on Walmart’s current employees,” he told the New York Times.
- Citibank Blues: Citigroup, the parent of Citibank, says it’s cutting by 75% the number of managers who will get a boost in pay and title at the end of the year. Only 2,000 employees will get a bonus or promotion this year, down from the average 8,000 a year, the Financial Times reports. CEO Jane Fraser has already slashed 10,000 jobs this year, cutting the workforce to 229,000.
- Chips Away: The Commerce Department said it’s cut about $600 million from the $8.5 billion in direct funding it was sending to chipmaker Intel to boost U.S. semiconductor production, after Intel won a $3 billion contract from the Pentagon. The feds also cited a cutback in Intel’s own investment plans and development timetable, which knocked $10 billion off the firm’s planned $100 billion investment program and appeared to delay some projects beyond a 2030 deadline.
Elon’s World
California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is hitting back at Trump’s plans to end electric-vehicle subsidies, and at Musk’s support for Trump (and the move of X and SpaceX headquarters to texas from SanFrancisco). Newsome said that if Trump cancels the $7,500 EV tax credit, California will put in place a similar subsidy, but would include a market cap on eligible carmakers to encourage smaller and newer EV makers. • After Comcast said it plans to spin off MSNBC and a host of other cable properties into separate companies, Musk mused publicly that perhaps he should purchase the left-leaning news channel. A Comcast spokesperson poured cold water on the notion. “We are looking forward to the planned spinoff of our cable networks, which will create a new company owned by our shareholders — none of these assets are for sale.” • When a Fox News host asked Maye Musk about her son, noting his immense wealth, Mamma Musk said she loves her son despite his riches: “I don’t like the word ‘wealthy’ or ‘billionaire’ or things like that because I think it’s degrading. I think he’s the genius of the world, and people are loving him for that.” • As conservative activists try to nix the Onion’s purchase of InfoWars, the fake news site that Alex Jones had to sell to pay Sandy Hook parents for saying they faked their kids’ deaths in the infamous school shooting, Musk is saying he won’t relinquish InfoWars’ Twitter accounts, claiming in a court filing that all X accounts are X Corp.’s “exclusive property,” even though content is owned by the account holders. A Houston bankruptcy court that’s handling the liquidation of InfoWars has yet to respond. • Grimes, the former pop star who had three children with Musk, has dissed him on X, saying he wouldn’t let her see one of her kids for five months. The couple share three children: sons X Æ A-Xii, 4, and Techno Mechanicus, 2, and daughter Exa Dark Sideræl, 3. “Spent a year locked in battle in a state with terrible mothers rights having my instagram posts and modeling used as reasons I shouldn’t have my kids and fighting and detaching from the love of my life as he becomes unrecognizable to me, with a fraction of his resources (or iq/ strategy experience), all the while I didn’t see one of my babies for 5 months,” she wrote, adding, “And this is only what can be said publicly, since most of my experience these last years should remain behind closed doors.” • As he warms up for his role co-leading a blue-ribbon consulting commission on cutting government spending, Musk has attacked the F-35 program, which builds the world’s most expensive fighter aircraft. Musk is arguing it’s time to abandon manned combat flight and replace jets with swarms of low-cost, AI-driven drones. His comment sent F-35 maker Lockheed Martin’s stock down 3%. Small drones used in the Russia-Ukraine conflict cost $10,000 to $50,000 each, compared to the F-35′s $80 million price tag. • The British police may be the best in the world, at least according to Tom Robinson Band, but the UK’s police forces are abandoning X after it was used to spread misinformation about the stabbing of several schoolchildren in the English town of Southport, sparking riots across Britain last summer, according to the Daily Telegraph. • NASA’s Dragonfly mission to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, will be propelled by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the government space agency said this week. Musk, who’s vowed to make massive cuts to the federal budget with his new Department of Government Efficiency, has more than $11 billion worth of contracts with NASA. • Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says there’s no way man is going to Mars, no matter what Elon Musk wants. “For him to just say, let’s go to Mars because it’s the next thing to do, what is that venture capitalist meeting [going to] look like?” Tyson told Bill Maher. “‘So, Elon, what do you want to do?’ ‘I want to go to Mars?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘$1 trillion.’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘No. People will probably die.’ ‘What’s the return on the investment?’ ‘Nothing.’ That’s a five-minute meeting. And it doesn’t happen,” he said.
“Wow, they really don’t get it,” Musk responded in a post on X.
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The Short Stack
- Out of Control: United Airlines is blaming the FAA for its Thanksgiving weekend delays that by Wednesday had hit more than 350,000 travelers. Some 6 million Americans are expected to travel by air this holiday weekend — the most ever on a Thanksgiving — according to the TSA. United says a lack of air traffic controllers at its Newark hub is forcing it to delay flights. The FAA acknowledged it has struggled to recruit controllers. Pay is down, and Congress has been loath to pay for more controllers or a much-needed upgrade to air traffic control systems.
- Bitcoin’s surge: The cryptocurrency (trading just short of $100,000 wednesday) is drawing the attention of the IRS, which is looking to tax the extraordinary gains since Bitcoin tanked in 2022. New reporting rules will make it harder to avoid paying tax on realized crypto gains, the Wall Street Journal reports. “The thing to do now is to clean up your digital books and records. The reporting regime is coming,” Washington tax lawyer Mark Howe told the newspaper.
- Macy’s hidden delivery fees: No they’re not charging shoppers. Instead, a so-far-unidentified Macy’s employee had misstated the costs of small package delivery in the company’s books to the tune of $154 million. That forced the department store chain to delay releasing its full third-quarter earnings report, even as it announced that sales in the quarter were down 2.4 percent to $4.74 billion. Macy’s hasn’t said why the now-former employee misattributed the cost, only that there was no sign of embezzlement. Apparently there’s a new watchword at Macy’s shipping department. “Hello, Federal!”
- French Fry cartel? Forget cocaine or oil as lucrative cartels! A flurry of lawsuits filed at the end of last week accuse four of the U.S.’s largest frozen french fry makers of conspiring to raise prices by as much as 47% from 2022 to 2024. The four firms make up 97% of the frozen fry industry, which is worth about $68 billion (yes billion) according to one suit. Reps for several of the firms have denied any conspiracy.
- I’m the Taxman: A second $20 billion cut to the IRS’ enforcement budget could boost the national debt by $140 billion dollars, the Treasury warned. Without the money the IRS would have to forgo 6,000 audits of wealthy individuals and 2,000 audits of large corporations, Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said Tuesday. Those audits usually result in scores of billions of dollars of added tax revenue; auditors uncover illegal tax dodges.
Tariffs and Turmoil
Donald Trump apparently wasn’t joking when he said he’d slap tariffs on Mexico and Canada for supposedly flooding the U.S. with migrants and fentanyl. Neither statements are true, but Trump has now wagged a short finger at the U.S. neighbors who are members of the Trump-negotiated USMCA — the NAFTA-clone trade agreement creating a relatively common market among North America’s three largest economies. This week he said he plans to impose 25% tariffs on everything imported from Canada and Mexico, and 10% tariffs on imports from China, which is well below the previously threatened 50% to 60% tariffs on Chinese goods.
America’s biggest retailer was quick to note those tariffs will hurt consumers. “Tariffs are going to be inflationary, there’s no disputing that,” Walmart finance chief John David Rainey told Fox News. Here’s a look at some of the sectors that will be hurt by Trump’s planned tariffs.
- Automakers: The top 10 car manufacturers with Mexican plants collectively built 1.4 million vehicles over the first six months of this year, with 90% heading across the border to U.S. buyers, according to the Mexican auto trade association. GM would take the biggest hit, as it’s expected to import about 750,000 vehicles from Mexico or Canada this year. And it’s not only whole cars, Mexico and Canada provide about half the components used in U.S. car assembly, worth nearly $100 billion. Trump’s tariffs will hurt the U.S. as much as its trading partners. “The U.S. would be shooting itself in the foot,” Kenneth Smith Ramos, Mexico’s former chief negotiator for the USMCA trade pact, told Reuters.
- Oil: U.S. refineries count on 4 million barrels a day of oil from Canada that is refined and consumed in the U.S. or exported, and Mexico provides another million barrels a day to the U.S. That’s going to raise fuel prices, especially in the Midwest where refineries that use Canadian oil are located. The refiners trade association, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers group, took a dim view of the proposed tariffs in a statement it issued, warning the new tax would “impact consumers and undercut our advantage as the world’s leading maker of liquid fuels.”
- Textiles: Tariffs on Chinese good would help U.S. industry, even if it hurts U.S. consumers, but including Canada and Mexico could undermine U.S. manufacturing, said Kim Glas, the chief executive of the National Council of Textile Organizations. She noted that 54% of U.S. made textiles are exported to Canada and Mexico where they are finished and sent back to the U.S.
- Steel: Putting tariffs on Canadian steel would “dramatically harm workers in both our countries,” said Dave McCall, president of the United Steelworkers union. “Canada is not the problem,” he said in a statement.
The relentlessly pro-business U.S. chamber of Commerce said Trump could crack down on fentanyl, if that’s what really motivates him, without using tariffs. “If imposed,” the chamber said in a statement, “tariffs themselves would not solve our border problems, and instead would send prices soaring, costing the typical American family more than $1,000, with significant harm to U.S. manufacturers, farmers and ranchers.”
Peter S. Green is a veteran reporter and editor who has spent more than two decades covering business and finance from Eastern Europe to New York City, and has worked for Bloomberg News, The New York Post, The New York Times and The Messenger. He lives in New York City and is always looking for the next big story.
