Global food shortages will soon become a reality, including for Americans, acknowledged President Joe Biden on Thursday. That will happen, he said, because of the sanctions that the United States and its allies imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, which implies that the looming food shortages are created by the globalist elites themselves.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, where Biden was meeting with NATO leaders, the president said,
We did talk about food shortages. It’s going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed on Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.
People around the world have been heartbroken for the Ukrainians living for the past month under attack from Russia. Images and videos of ordinary Ukrainians being killed in their homes as well as images of the destroyed and burned civilian infrastructure have been shared globally on all sorts of media.
The Biden administration and its Western allies have imposed unprecedented sanctions on the Russian economy and the Putin regime. Western officials, however, did not explain that all those “crippling sanctions” that “inflict great economic pain” would boomerang back at the ordinary folks in Europe, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. Why did the global elites, with their army of economic and financial advisors, decide to take actions that would empty the shelves at grocery stores around the world — not just in Russia? The president did not touch on that.
Biden went on to stress that “Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat, for example.”
It is worth noting that Ukraine and Russia are not just the “breadbasket” of Europe. They also export wheat to the Middle East and Northern African (MENA) countries, which are already paying the cost of the sanctions.
As reported by The New American earlier this month, economists have started sounding the alarm that hunger would become a reality for some 474 million people living in MENA countries in the near future if the war between Ukraine and Russia is not stopped.
Together, Russia and Ukraine are responsible for nearly a third of all global wheat production. Some MENA countries import up to 85 percent of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine.
The results of the ongoing conflict and the sanctions that, apparently, do little to end it hurt ordinary folks in places that have nothing to do with Russia’s actions.
“Ukraine supplies a huge amount of grain to most of these [MENA] countries and a lot of these places are already on a knife’s edge. The least little thing that disturbs bread prices even more could really kick off a lot of turmoil,” Professor of Middle East politics at New York University-Abu Dhabi Monica Marks told Al Jazeera.
How about Americans?
So far, Americans have been dealing with soaring consumer prices, which are said to be rising even higher due to the situation in Europe.
In early March, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged the “highly uncertain” economic impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He stressed that commodity prices are rising “significantly,” and that this is “going to work its way through our economy.” As a result, “We’re going to see upward pressure on inflation.”
The president blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for the inflation and calls it “Putin’s Price Hike.” To educate Americans, particularly the younger generation, on how the economy works and that American prices have soared because of Putin, and nobody else, the White House has hired TikTok “influencers.”
What the social-media “influencers” won’t tell their audiences, however, is that food prices in the United States started growing last winter, and have exploded in recent months under the Biden administration before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In January, inflation reached a 40-year high, with prices rising 7.5 percent over the previous year.
That happened in accordance with basic economic laws, in large part due to unprecedented federal spending. President Biden, not surprisingly, denies that the price hikes are connected to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both passed in 2021 and signed into law by Biden.
Similarly, the president continues to deny his administration’s energy policies crippled domestic oil production while making America depended on Russian oil. For example, in 2021, Russia became America’s number one foreign source of oil.
There’s another aspect of the food-supply issues.
Sanctions imposed on Russian exports by the Western allies have sent fertilizer prices “hitting record highs,” according to Market Insider.
The outlet notes, “Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of fertilizer, which is a crucial piece of the global food supply. With sanctions from the West, the key resource is now in trouble.” Again, one can wonder how the West could miscalculate the impact of sanctions that undermine this crucial link in the food supply chain.
The ongoing Ukraine conflict and sanctions will only make price hikes worse. The New York Post reports, “The Green Markets North American Fertilizer Index, already high, jumped 16% last Friday.… The issue is that farmland without fertilizer is vastly less productive. Without fertilizer, corn and wheat yields in the United States would decline by more than 40%.”
Just three days before Biden’s grim announcement in Brussels, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “We’re not expecting a food shortage here at home” while noting the rising prices on food and fuel will impact many countries around the world.
What is Biden proposing to address the materializing reality of food shortages, which is, basically, a fancy word for hunger?
At Brussels, Biden said, “We had a long discussion in the G-7 with both the United States, which is the third-largest producer of wheat in the world, as well as Canada, which is also a major, major producer.” Countries are debating how to “increase and disseminate foods more quickly.” Meaning, the food that will be in short supply in America will be sent elsewhere.
Biden wants Europe “and everyone else” “to end trade restrictions on sending limitations on sending food abroad.” Meaning, they should be sending out their food, too.
While “sharing is caring,” simply “disseminating food” that will likely become scarce everywhere will not help. Such a critical situation should be addressed by eliminating its cause, which Biden correctly identified as Western sanctions on Russia. Unless they have some other agenda, if the Western elites do not reverse their course, the crippling sanctions imposed on “bad guys” will cripple the rest of the world, too.
