White House’s 2021 Fourth of July Cookout Tweet Did Not Age Well

Some might remember a much-derided White House tweet from 2021, boasting that Americans would save a whopping 16 cents on their families’ Fourth of July cookouts compared with 2020. The source for that tweet was the American Farm Bureau, which does an annual survey of how the costs of the cookout change from year to year.

The bureau released its 2022 report today, and the cost of an Independence Day cookout rose more than ten dollars from last year. Americans’ parties will cost them $69.68 this year, rather than the 2021 total of $59.50, a 17 percent increase.

In addition to the total cost of the barbecue, the bureau lists the price changes of individual items. Last year, the White House listed the bureau’s estimates for half of the items, whose costs fell from 2021 (it left out the other half because their costs increased). Almost all the items the White House listed as cheaper last year became more expensive this year. Here are their price increases: pork and beans rose 33 percent, ground beef rose 36 percent, vanilla ice cream rose 10 percent, center-cut pork chops rose 31 percent, and lemonade rose 22 percent.

The only items in the White House’s tweet whose price decreased from last year were sliced cheese and potato chips, the prices of which decreased 13 percent and 4 percent, respectively. Because their cost rose in 2021 compared with the year before, strawberries were left out of last year’s tweet, but their cost is 16 percent lower in 2022, the only item to decrease other than the two aforementioned.

If we were to put a positive spin on the bureau’s report, we could say that the low savings of 2021 mitigated the high increase of 2022. Instead of losing $10.18 from 2020 to now, we only lost $10.02. Maybe those 16 cents will help at the gas pump.