Why the Election Has the Specialty Cheese Industry Bracing for Disaster
Tariffs, MAHA, and more.
Well. Hi. How’s everybody doing?
I’m feeling better—well, less shitty—than expected in light of this election result. Better than the last time this happened in 2016, when a 14-hour day working the polls ended with me refreshing 538 and breaking down emotionally all alone in my dark apartment.
Aside from the fact that after the last 8 years, very little about American electoral politics surprises me, I think I’m not losing it in the same way (yet) because I’ve been doing very little feeling at all.
I spent the last week distracting myself, checking out, and asking very little of my brain or attention. I worked minimally. I kept myself busy fussing with things around the house, doing the kinds of tasks that tug at my attention when I’m supposed to be meeting a deadline or plowing through a to-do list: repotting that plant, finally hanging a coat rack, putting my little garden plot to bed for the winter. At night—so starting at 5:30pm—I rotted on the couch and rewatched the first two seasons of The Americans, one of my top 5 favorite shows. I took a few walks and cooked. I tried and mostly failed to read actual books, though I did read way too much about the news on my phone.
This week, I’m back to meetings and deadlines and the usual routines. I’d describe my outlook as grimly numb, trying not to think through the myriad devastating implications of our very near future that I know will hit harder in the coming weeks.
A friend reminded me that we woke up on November 6 in the same country we did the day before—which is a true, if not exactly comforting, reminder that the same efforts to create a survivable, just, and joyful world must continue. Still, there are some real fuck-you policies that are coming—for the country’s most vulnerable people and to the particular segment of the food system that’s the focus of this newsletter.
So what I’m going to do is compartmentalize, cherry-picking just a few of the ways the impending administration could affect the specialty cheese industry as well as our food system as a whole. (I don’t have the heart to dig deep into the climate implications right now, but the TLDR is: It’s bad!).
Tariffs
I do not pretend to know anything about economics except that (a) it’s fake but (b) people really do seem to think and act in accordance with their material conditions. (I have not read Marx and probably never will, but I did listen to a 23-part podcast series about historical materialism.)
Anyway. Tariffs are, theoretically, a way for governments to raise money and promote consumption of domestic products by taxing imported goods. Sadly, they do not work, and those higher costs paid by importers to bring products into the country typically get passed down the supply chain to consumers, fueling inflation.
The first Trump administration implemented tariffs on European imports, including cheese, in 2019, and cheese importers and retailers suffered for it; some even closed. That’s on top of the tariffs on Chinese imports he implemented in 2018—the revenue from which went almost entirely to bailing out the American farmers this policy harmed after China retaliated.
Specialty cheese importers, distributors, and retailers who stock European cheeses—so, the vast majority of them—are already sounding the alarm on how this could impact cheese prices and businesses. There is no silver lining, either: higher-priced imports do not promote sales of domestic wheels in the cheese case because small-scale, American-made artisan cheeses are often much more expensive than imports, for several reasons that deserve their own post. Instead, the margin and reputation of those lower-cost imports can make up for the higher cost and niche reputation of domestic artisan cheeses (very generally speaking).
Formaggio Kitchen owner Julia Hallman put it this way: Independent cheese shops could be impacted by higher costs on imported cheeses in the new admin, so shop small for the holidays to give them a boost while you can.
Agriculture
The Project 2025 agenda—which includes deporting the 73% of farmworkers who are immigrants—would be nothing short of disastrous for our food system as a whole. Honing in on the dairy industry, immigrants make up more than half of the labor pool on dairy farms, and nearly 80% of all milk produced in the US comes from dairies that rely on immigrant labor. This labor keeps our milk artificially cheap while subjecting these workers to working and living conditions that are often unsafe, coercive, and abusive.
In my experience, people in the cheese industry sometimes think of fluid milk as a separate, more conventional subsector of the industry, but at the farm level, the distinction isn’t so cut and dry. Immigrant farmworkers are part of cheese supply chains, too. I’d like to see specialty cheese industry orgs and advocates engage with this reality and openly advocate for this community, perhaps by partnering with farmworker-led initiatives like Milk With Dignity.
Other to-dos on the incoming admin’s list that will royally screw producers and eaters: Eliminating conservation programs and climate action priorities from USDA. Rolling back efforts to rectify decades of discrimination against Black farmers and ranchers. Gutting SNAP, school lunch, and dietary guideline reform. The Union of Concerned Scientists has more details.
MAHA
I cannot believe we spent the last year and a half hearing about RFKJR’s sexual assaulting, bear carcass-dumping, whale-beheading, not really dog-eating, brain worm-having ass only to end up…here. I always dreamed that issues like regenerative agriculture would be a priority of an incoming administration, but not like this.
Now in line for some kind of health czar position with the new administration, Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again platform occupies the center of the Venn diagram between crunchy “sustainability” and “wellness” culture and the anti-vax, raw liver-eating ultra-right. I highly recommend Andrea Hernández from Snaxshot’s breakdown of the thermidorian reaction we’re seeing as the American food culture pendulum swings to the right, correcting the plant-based craze of the 2010s with the ascendance of raw milk, beef tallow, and tradwives.
We know Kennedy wants to do things like eliminate ultra-processed foods from school lunch, remove fluoride from water supplies, fight against Big Pharma and Big Food, and promote “vaccine choice”—the latter a particularly sinister position in light of the fact that we’re about to layer an H5N1 pandemic over the ongoing covid-19 crisis.
It would actually be awesome if political appointees prioritized feeding kids healthier school lunches (the same lunches that will be taken away by other prongs of the Trump platform?), supporting farmers using climate-mitigating and adaptive practices, and reforming the pharmaceutical industry and corporate food.
But so far, it appears that—shocker—the MAHA platform is still nebulous, contradictory, and, if the rumored appointment of racist, covid-minimizing, 5G conspiracy-promoting livestock farmer Joel Salatin to a USDA advisory position is any indication, deeply unserious.
In her Food Fix newsletter, food policy journalist Helena Bottemiller Evich interviewed Trump transition team member Calley Means about what MAHA actually wants to do. As of now, that platform is mostly buzzwords: “bring[ing] stakeholders to the table,” “farmers need to be at the center,” “opening up a golden age of farming.” Okay!
If you work in cheese, farming, retail, or elsewhere along the food supply chain, I’d love to know more about how you’re feeling and what you’re dreading (or, somehow, looking forward to?) about the changes that await us in 2025.
Recent Work
I’ve been toiling elsewhere in the content mines than journalism lately, but I recently filed some contributions to Culture’s upcoming Best Cheeses issue. You’ll hear about it when they’re live, sometime early in the new year.
Recent Cheese
I’m devoted to my neighborhood hand-rolled bagel spot, Cleo Bagels, whose long road to brick-and-mortar I wrote about for the Inquirer when they opened last fall. A few months ago, owner Alex Malamy finally debuted the shop’s take on an egg and cheese, a molten, omelet-like creation that’s best served on one of their tender, airy bialys to avoid the dreaded squish-out-the-sides that can happen with breakfast sandwiches on bagels. I got mine with New School American, which melted gorgeously but felt a little flat, flavor-wise, for a processed product that’s supposed to made with better-quality raw materials. Next time, I’ll try it with Abundantly Good Colby.
Not pictured: A plate I made with buttery, yielding, Gouda-esque Dutch sheep’s milk cheese Lamb Chopper, because it was $5/lb off at Whole Foods, a place I almost never shop. I picked up some of Rustic Bakery’s apricot, pistachio, and brandy crisps to go with it and served ‘em with salted pistachios, Greek olives, and the most delicious jam I’ve ever tasted, an apricot-peach-smoked tea preserve that I brought back from France this summer.
I'm currently in Italy (left the US the day after the election) on a 99% US news fast. Instead of reading, I am eating locally-produced food and wine. The food culture here is, as you know, so different from the US. This is one of the few US-based reads I've allowed into my sphere. Appreciate your excellent overview of where we might be headed.
I work as s broker between producers, importers, distributors and retailers for several cheesemakers, spanish imports, charcuterie etc.
We are all nervous and some additional inventory is already being bought for long shelf life items.
I also have worked in raw milk cheese for a very pragmatic, cautious domestic producer.
Some of the language being thrown around about fluid raw milk products under RFK scares the /s$&t out of me. Food is my livelihood and my world and I want to keep it safe and more accessible, these are worrisome times.