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Whatever you think of Trump, you have to admit he’s done a lot.

But here’s the thing: Most of what Trump has done in his first 100 days isn’t in your best interest.

Trump’s most popular campaign promise was to bring down the price of groceries.

Now, while he really really loves to talk about groceries…

TRUMP: …groceries, it's an old-fashioned term, groceries. A bag with different things in it

He hasn’t actually done anything to bring grocery prices down.

In fact, on top of nearly tanking the stock market, Trump’s blanket tariffs will raise the price of groceries and almost everything else you buy.

That’s because tariffs are just like sales taxes — meaning you’ll be paying more at the checkout line.

Worse yet, tariffs are regressive taxes — they take a bigger chunk out of the paychecks of working people than from the wealthy.

Trump also campaigned on making housing and cars more affordable.

But Trump hasn’t proposed anything to lower housing costs. In fact, tariffs on lumber, steel, and aluminum will make new housing construction more expensive and raise rents.

And the price of a new car is expected to go up about $6,400 under Trump’s proposed automobile tariffs.

And let’s not forget…

The easiest way to boost the income of 40 million Americans would be to increase the federal minimum wage — which hasn’t gone up since 2009 — to $15 an hour. But Trump didn’t do that. Instead he actually cut the minimum wage for as many as 400,000 federal contractors by rescinding Biden’s executive order to raise their wages. 

Meanwhile, he’s working with MAGA Republicans in Congress to pass even more tax cuts for the richest Americans and biggest corporations. How will he pay for them? With cuts to programs, like Medicaid, that millions of people rely on. 

And how about jobs?

Instead, Trump has made cutting jobs one of his top priorities. 

Trump’s in the process of cutting nearly 300,000 federal jobs. That’s bad for the folks who are out of work. It’s also bad for everyone who relied on the vital work these public servants did — whether it’s inspecting our food, warning us about extreme weather, or protecting us from financial fraud. And it’s bad for the job market when there are suddenly hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed people. That will likely push down wages and make it harder to get a job.

So if Trump didn’t keep his promises to lower prices, raise wages, or create jobs…what has he done? 

A lot of things no one was asking for, like:

Letting the world’s richest man effectively cut Social Security. 

Disrupting cancer and Alzheimer’s research.

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Firing the team at the FDA that handles bird flu outbreaks and firing the CDC team dedicated to stopping mother-to-child H.I.V. transmission. Honestly, I didn’t know it was possible to be against protecting babies from H.I.V.

How about making an enemy of Canada?

CARNEY: The old relationship we had with the United States // is over.

Do you know how hard it is to piss off a Canadian?

Or how about threatening to invade Greenland and Panama?

What else?

Doing an ad for Tesla on the White House lawn…

Putting American troops at risk by accidentally leaking military plans on a messaging app  —and then not even holding anyone accountable for this dangerous blunder. 

Hello?

Spending more time golfing than any recent president in his first 100 days — even more than in his first term by this point — costing taxpayers like you over $26 million.

Gutting the Office of Federal Student Aid.

Shutting down a Department of Justice team that investigates crypto fraud, just as he launches his own “memecoin” and his family business gets more involved in the industry.

Siding with Russia and North Korea against our allies in Europe.

Cutting veterans’ services.

Wrecking the IRS so badly that the super-rich won’t be audited — making it even easier for them to skirt what they owe. 

And of course, he’s trying to turn America into a dictatorship. He’s ripping up the Constitution piece by piece. So far, he’s defying:

The First Amendment by trying to silence dissent.

Article I, which gives Congress (not the president) the power to control government spending.

Article III by ignoring judicial rulings — including decisions handed down by the Supreme Court.

The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments by detaining, deporting, and imprisoning people without due process of law.

The 14th Amendment by denying birthright citizenship.

And even, possibly, the 22nd Amendment by suggesting he might serve more than two terms.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Everything Trump has done in his first 100 days has been to benefit his billionaire donors and corporate backers — and to consolidate more power in his hands.

All at your expense.

So yes, Trump has done a lot — just not what most Americans were asking for, and certainly not what we need. We deserve better.

It's good to see all of you here. Students, my faculty colleagues, administrators, everybody in and of the Berkeley community.

We are in a national emergency. A little over 60 years ago, some of you may remember being right here on Sproul Plaza at the beginning of the Free Speech Movement. That Free Speech Movement took over. It took over Berkeley. It took over America. It confirmed our commitment, not only as Berkeley students and administrators and faculty and this community, but as communities of learning across America. It confirmed our commitment to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and freedom to learn what we wanted to learn.

The emergency right now is almost directly upon us. On Friday, as you know, one of the best, if not the best, private university in America or the world got a set of demands from the Trump regime that if it accepted that best or near best private university in America or the world would have lost its integrity, its own freedom, its own ability to govern itself. It would have succumbed and surrendered to the Trump regime. And what it did instead is it said no.

Now, if the best or near best private university in America or the world can say no, if it can defy the Trump regime, even at the expense, at a big expense, and I'll get into this in a moment, if it can do that, then the best public university in America and the world must do the same.

And make no mistake, that letter from the Trump regime is coming. It may come today or tomorrow or this week. It is coming to the Berkeley administration and it will have a list of demands. And Berkeley, if it is going to maintain its integrity and its independence, and it must, it must say no.

This is an issue that goes beyond issues of just academic freedom. It goes to the core meaning of freedom in this country. It goes to the essence of what we all believe about America. Because if the Trump regime can dictate to any university the terms on which its faculty or its students or its administrators or anybody in this community is going to function, then there is no limits to what that regime will do.

You cannot appease a tyrant.

Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of Britain, in 1939 tried to appease a tyrant. Guess what? It didn't work.

Columbia University tried to appease a tyrant. Guesswhat? It didn't work. Hey, tyrants. It doesn't work because you're feeding the tyrants. Some law firms tried to appease a tyrant. tyranny. The only way to deal with a tyrant is to deny the tyrant the ability to be tyrannical. Tyranny cannot exist unless people submit to it. And we are not going to submit.

Now, it's easy to say this, but to actually resist, to renounce, to say no, is costly. Columbia University and Harvard and other private universities that are resisting or have tried to resist certainly are facing major costs. But let me be very, very clear. The costs are worth it. It takes courage. It takes courage to resist tyranny. Courage is contagious. After Harvard stood up to the tyrant, guess what? Columbia, that had been surrendering to that tyrant, that Columbia just said, no, we have stopped surrendering. We now feel from courage. And there are a few courageous law firms that have said no to the tyrant. And they are summoning the courage of other law firms.

The test of this country is our ability to say no to tyranny and arbitrary authority, to say no to somebody who does not have any sense of limits in terms of power or need for subjugation, need for dominance, need to put other people down. This university is going to be at the lead of American public universities in saying to that tyrant, no.

I want to thank you all. But more importantly, I want to thank you for your courage, not just today. Again, it's easy today. But solidarity, the kind of solidarity we are feeling by being all together, solidarity breeds courage.

One of the reasons that so many people in this country are afraid right now, one of the reasons that so many international students are afraid to say what they think, one of the reasons that so many people are afraid that they might be even abducted and sent to a prison in El Salvador is because they feel a lack of solidarity. They feel that they are vulnerable. They feel that they and their liberties can be taken at any time. And their right, if there is no solidarity, if we are not protecting them, if we are not helping them, if we are not looking out for them.

So I thank you for your courage. I ask you to help Berkeley and its administration do the right thing. I ask you to help international students understand that we have their backs. Because if anybody is intimidated, if anybody feels they cannot speak or learn or teach or do what they want to doin terms of their intellectual life, none of us is safe. The truth is not safe. And I will say this about the administration's abduction of people without any due process, without any trial, without any judge overseeing it. If somebody can be abducted in the United States and sent to a brutal prison in another land, none of us, none of us is safe.

The next days and months and years will demand from all of us great courage and solidarity. Be prepared. Thank you. Thank you.

Trump seems to have given up on trying to make groceries cheaper.

Remember when that was what the entire election was supposedly about?

Well, now he admits he won’t be lowering grocery prices after all. He told Time Magazine: "I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard,"

Yes it will be hard, because of Trump’s economic plans. What are they, exactly?

Well first, Trump plans to slash the top corporate tax rate down to just 15 percent, which would result in the five largest grocery stores getting a collective $1.7 billion dollar tax cut. But, do you think they will pass those savings on to you? Think again. 

The year after Trump cut the corporate tax rate in his first term, the largest corporations spent a then-record $806 billion on stock buybacks — juicing their own share prices and lining the pockets of their executives and shareholders. Walmart, the nation’s largest grocer, has spent $43 billion on buybacks since 2018. If Trump is rewarding grocery stores and food distributors with more tax cuts, why wouldn’t they just line their pockets again?

Second, grocery prices will skyrocket thanks to Trump’s [proposed] 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. That’s because our neighbors to the north and south are two of our biggest agricultural trading partners —accounting for $84 billion worth of food and beverage imports in 2023. And despite what Trump says, tariffs are not paid by other countries. They are paid by us at the checkout line.

Third, Trump’s appointee to head the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, has vowed to end the agency’s “war on mergers.” This will lead to less competition in a food industry that’s already dominated by just a few corporations. Research shows that markets with fewer competitors have higher prices — which means you’ll be paying even more for groceries. That’s why the Biden Administration sued to block the merger between mega-grocers Kroger and Albertsons. They won that battle, but big food corporations are licking their chops to gobble up the competition when the Trump Administration gives them the greenlight.

Fourth, Trump’s cruelest promise of all is deporting millions of immigrants, whose hard work is crucial to our food supply. 

Around 1.7 million undocumented people work across the food supply chain in America. Farms, dairies, ranches, and food processors all rely on undocumented workers. Experts agree that mass deportations will result in labor shortages. And what would that mean? Higher prices for consumers.

Let’s be clear: Trump never had any plan to bring down grocery prices and help working families. 

Because he doesn’t care about you — he cares about his corporate donors and billionaire buddies. He’s focused on making his rich friends even richer — and your life even harder.