Imports Helped Ease Egg Prices, But Here Come Tariffs

For more than three years, farmers have fought a battle with a fatal strain of bird flu that continues to disrupt the U.S. egg supply. Most recently, continual large-scale outbreaks of the virus across multiple states from October to February took a massive toll on the U.S. flock of egg-laying hens. With limited supplies, shoppers have encountered skyrocketing prices, buying restrictions, empty store shelves and restaurant surcharges on eggs.

Egg prices rose roughly 60% in one year

The average cost of a dozen Grade A large eggs was $6.23 in March, setting a new record for the third straight month, according to data from the BLS, retrieved from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ FRED site.

The latest consumer price index, or CPI, shows that the price of eggs is up 5.9% from where it was a month ago and 60.4% from this time last year. That’s in contrast to the trajectory of food prices overall, which rose 3% in the past year.

» MORE: Will prices ever go down?

BLS data tracking egg prices goes back to at least 1980, when large, Grade A eggs cost $0.88 a dozen, not adjusted for inflation. Before February 2022, the average cost of a dozen had largely stayed below $2 since March 2016. Then, the price of eggs more than doubled from the beginning of 2022 until hitting a peak of $4.82 per dozen in January 2023. Prices largely fell until September 2023 before returning to a steady climb. A new price record was set in January 2025 at $4.95 per dozen.

Why are eggs so expensive?

The pandemic and inflation play a role in rising egg prices, but the real culprit is H5N1, a highly transmissible and fatal strain of avian influenza, or bird flu. Outbreaks started in early 2022 and quickly grew into the largest bird flu outbreak in U.S. history. When an outbreak occurs, egg producers are forced to cull their flocks, per USDA policy, which impacts the supply of eggs headed for grocery stores.

As of April 7, the virus has affected about 125 million commercial egg-laying hens in the U.S. since February 2022, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. That includes just the layers that were actively producing eggs.

Another 6.9 million pullets have been culled over the years. Those are the young birds destined to replace today’s egg layers once they’ve reached maturity. Those losses are significant because of what it means for an egg producer’s ability to recover from an outbreak.

Generally, as the number of egg-layers shrinks, egg supplies tighten and egg prices rise. That’s for at least two reasons: First, consumer demand for eggs has held steady despite persistently high prices. The mismatch between supply and demand tends to drive prices up.

Second, the tight supply of eggs has led grocery stores to change the way they price eggs altogether. Previously, it was common for retailers to keep egg prices low — sometimes even pricing them below what the store paid for them wholesale — because eggs effectively draw shoppers into the store. They’d come for cheap eggs and leave with a cart full of groceries.

But now, pricing eggs too low could mean selling out, which would increase the chances that shoppers encounter empty shelves and abandon their carts. Retailers will keep prices at levels that help them avoid that situation as much as possible.

DOJ to investigate corporate price fixing

The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into large egg producers’ pricing practices, the Wall Street Journal reported March 7. The DOJ will be looking into whether these producers conspired to set high prices or limit the supply of eggs.

As egg prices reached new heights at the beginning of 2025, long-simmering concerns about corporations’ role in setting prices grew louder. Advocacy groups and members of Congress publicly called on the new administration to investigate food companies for high prices, citing a significant jump in profits reported in January by Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the U.S.

At the time the company’s earnings were released, Cal-Maine’s CEO said the bump was because of elevated prices. “Translation: the egg company and its shareholders are making higher profits while Americans shell out more for grocery staples,” states a Jan. 26 letter addressed to Trump from a group of Democrats led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Representatives for the egg industry have continually pushed back on claims that egg companies can control prices.

Recently, Emily Metz, CEO of the American Egg Board, told PBS News, “I can't speak to why the Justice Department is doing what they're doing, but I can speak to the facts, and the facts are very simple. The price of eggs are set on the commodity market.”

When will egg prices settle down?

Prices will remain volatile until producers can rebuild their flocks and recover egg production levels. But that’s hard to do when the virus remains out of control. Cases affecting egg-laying flocks slowed way down in March but a resurgence is likely.

So far in 2025, more than 30 million egg-laying hens have been affected by H5N1. Another 2.5 million pullets have been culled. For comparison, roughly 38 million egg layers were impacted in all of 2024.

Since October, when the latest spate of outbreaks began, reports of bird flu have spanned 10 states and affected nearly 51 million egg-laying hens. But cases appear to be slowing for the moment. In February, about 11.4 million egg layers were affected by the virus. That’s down from more than 19.5 million in January — the worst month since outbreaks began in February 2022, according to a NerdWallet analysis of USDA data.

The total U.S. egg-laying population continues to decline. As of March 1, the number of hens laying table eggs was estimated at roughly 285 million, according to the USDA. That’s down from about 4% from February. In previous years, the population more typically numbered some 320 million.

That decline in the egg-laying hen population contributed to an almost 12% decline in table egg production in February compared with the previous month.

Why you might have seen cage-free egg shortages

In 2025, seven states — California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — have laws in place that ban the production and sale of conventional eggs for animal welfare reasons. National retailers like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods have made similar commitments.

When many of those states experienced major outbreaks of bird flu in 2024, the price spikes and supply shortages were intense. At the time, bird flu was having a disproportionate impact on cage-free egg layers. About a third of U.S. egg layers are cage-free hens, but they contributed nearly 60% of all bird flu cases for the year.

Not only does that mean the supply of cage-free eggs was down everywhere — which, as explained above, leads to higher prices — but it also had implications for how quickly supplies could recover, which were unique to cage-free eggs.

Already there are fewer sources for cage-free eggs. On top of that, in places where cage-free egg rules are in place, it can be tricky for retailers to find new suppliers that comply with whatever regulations the stores are required to follow.

As a result, grocery shoppers living in states or shopping in stores that restrict the sale of conventional eggs were especially likely to face higher prices, quantity restrictions and temporary egg shortages.

What’s Trump doing to bring down egg prices?

Before launching a DOJ investigation into egg pricing practices, the Trump administration said it would spend $1 billion to combat bird flu and, ultimately, bring down prices, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced on Feb. 26.

One element of that plan was to increase egg imports, which ramped up in February to help alleviate domestic supply shortages and bring down prices. But new tariffs enacted by the Trump administration could impact those imports.

The U.S. has been importing more eggs from Turkey, Brazil and South Korea, and those countries now face higher tariffs, Reuters reports. In an interview with Fox Business on April 3, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said tariffs could apply to those egg imports and negotiations with those countries are taking place.

Egg imports “exploded” in February, according to a recent market report by the Department of Agriculture. The U.S. imported nearly 4 million cartons of shelled eggs from Turkey and Mexico — a 478% increase over January. And imports of liquid and dried eggs came from Canada, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand.

In addition to exploring imports, most of the Agriculture Department’s $1 billion investment goes toward providing additional relief to farmers affected by outbreaks and expanding an existing biosecurity program to improve safety measures at egg-laying facilities across the country. Some money (about $100 million) would be used to research a vaccine and cut regulations.

The announcement hinted that the USDA will seek to roll back state rules that contribute to drastic price differences across the country. The USDA also wants to temporarily increase imports and decrease exports to bolster the domestic supply of eggs.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly included Arizona in a list of states with cage-free egg laws already in place. Arizona’s law has been delayed multiple times. Egg price volatility led Arizona to delay implementation of its cage-free egg law by seven years because of rising egg prices, according to a March 21 announcement by Gov. Katie Hobbs. Prior to that announcement, the deadline for implementing the rule had been pushed from January 2025 to January 2027.