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The U.S. government has caused massive food waste during President Donald Trumps second term. Policies such as immigration raids, tariff changes, and temporary and permanent cuts to food assistance programs have left farmers short of workers and money, food rotting in fields and warehouses, and millions of Americans hungry. And that doesnt even include the administrations actual destruction of edible food. The U.S. government estimates that more than 47 million people in America dont have enough food to eateven with federal and state governments spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on programs to help them. Yet, huge amounts of foodon average in the U.S., as much as 40% of itrots before being eaten. That amount is equivalent to 120 billion meals a year: more than twice as many meals as would be needed to feed those 47 million hungry Americans three times a day for an entire year. This colossal waste has enormous economic costs and renders useless all the water and resources used to grow the food. In addition, as it rots, the wasted food emits in the U.S. alone over four million metric tons of methanea heat-trapping greenhouse gas. As a scholar of wasted food, I have watched this problem worsen since Trump began his second term in January 2025. Despite this administrations claim of streamlining the government to make its operations more efficient, a range of recent federal policies have, in fact, exacerbated food wastage. Immigration policy Supplying fresh foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and dairy, requires skilled workers on tight timelines to ensure ripeness, freshness, and high quality. The Trump administrations widespread efforts to arrest and deport immigrants have sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol, and other agencies into hundreds of agricultural fields, meat processing plants, and food production and distribution sites. Supported by billions of taxpayer dollars, they have arrested thousands of food workers and farmworkerswith lethal consequences at times. Dozens of raids have not only violated immigrants human rights and torn families apart: They have jeopardized the national food supply. Farmworkers already work physically hard jobs for low wages. In legitimate fear for their lives and liberty, reports indicate that in some places 70% of people harvesting, processing, and distributing food stopped showing up to work by mid-2025. News reports have identified many instances where crops have been left to rot in abandoned fields. Even the U.S. Department of Labor declared in October 2025 that aggressive farm raids drive farmworkers into hiding, leave substantial amounts of food unharvested and thus pose a risk of supply shock-induced food shortages. Food specially formulated to feed starving children is marked for disposal in a U.S. government warehouse in July 2025. [Photo: Stephen B. Morton for The Washington Post via Getty Images] Foreign aid cuts When the Trump administration all but shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development in early 2025, the agency had 500 tons of ready-to-eat, high-energy biscuits worth US$800,000, stored to distribute to starving people around the world who had been displaced by violence or natural disasters. With no staff to distribute the biscuits, they expired while sitting in a warehouse in Dubai. Incinerating the out-of-date biscuits reportedly cost an additional $125,000. An additional 70,000 tons of USAID fod aid may also have been destroyed. Tariffs In the late 20th century, as globalized trade patterns grew, U.S. farmers struggled with agricultural prices below their production costs. Yet tariffs in the first Trump administration did not protect small farms. And the tariffs imposed in early 2025, after Trump regained the White House, severed U.S. soybean trade with China for months. Meanwhile, theres nowhere to store the mountains of soybeans. An October 2025 agreement may resume some activity, but at lower price levels and a slower pace than before, as China looks to Brazil and Argentina to meet its vast demand. Though the soybeans were intended to feed the Chinese pig industry, not humans, the specter of waste looms both in terms of the potential spoilage of soybeans and the actual human food that could have been grown in their place. Mature soybeans sit unharvested in an Indiana field in October 2025. [Photo: Jeremy Hogan/Getty Images] Other efforts lead to more waste Since taking office, the second Trump administration has taken many steps aimed at efficiency that actually boosted food waste. Mass firings of food safety personnel risks even more outbreaks of foodborne diseases, tainted imports, and agricultural pathogenswhich can erupt into crises requiring mass destruction, for instance, of nearly 35,000 turkeys with bird flu in Utah. In addition, the administration canceled a popular program that helped schools and food banks buy food from local farmers, though many of the crops had already been planted when the cancellation announcement was made. That food had to find new buyers or risk being wasted, too. And the farmers were unable to count on a key revenue source to keep their farms afloat. Also, the administration slashed funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency that helped food producers, restaurants, and households recover from disastersincluding restoring power to food-storage refrigeration. The fall 2025 government shutdown left the governments major food aid program, SNAP, in limbo for weeks, derailing communities ability to meet their basic needs. Grocers, who benefit substantially from SNAP funds, announced discounts for SNAP recipientsto help them afford food and to keep food supplies moving before they rotted. The Department of Agriculture ordered them not to, saying SNAP customers must pay the same prices as other customers. Food waste did not start with the Trump administration. But the administrations policiesthough they claim to be seeking efficiencyhave compounded voluminous waste at a time of growing need. This Thanksgiving, think about wasted foodas a problem, and as a symptom of larger problems. American University School of International Service masters student Laurel Levin contributed to the writing of this article. Tevis Garrett Graddy-Lovelace is a provost associate professor of environment, development and health at the American University School of International Service. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
Thanksgiving is behind us, which means the holiday shopping season has officially begun. And that means that both companies and third-party retailers will spend every day between now and Christmas morning trying to get you to spend your consumer dollars with them. As in years past, one of the most sought-after gifts will be the smartphone. According to an analysis last month by global marketing research firm NielsenIQ, 37% of shoppers buying tech this season have smartphones on their list. And when it comes to smartphone brands, Apple tops tech buyer preferences, with 54% of those surveyed looking to buy an iPhone. But as anyone who knows Apple well knows, the company rarely offers sales on its iconic smartphoneeven during the holidays. Yet that doesnt mean iPhone deals cant be had this festive season. You just need to know where to look. Here are three shopping hacks you can use to find the best deals on iPhones this holiday season. Use price tracking websites to keep tabs on iPhone sales Theres no shortage of places to buy an iPhone. Besides purchasing one directly from Apple, you can pick one up at nearly anywhere where electronics are sold, including Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, carrier stores like AT&T and Verizon, eBay, and more. Yet manually checking to see if any of these third-party resellers offer iPhone deals during the holidays (which they often do) can be time-consuming. But thats where price tracking websites come in. They let you quickly check whether an iPhone is on sale and often provide the direct link to buy it before the sale price disappears. There are numerous price tracking websites and apps you can use to find the best sales on an iPhone. These include sites like CamelCamelCamel, which tracks the prices of products available on Amazon. Just type in the iPhone model you are looking for in CamelCamelCamels search bar, and youll see Amazons current price of the model, along with new and used prices from third-party resellers on the site. You can also add your desired iPhone to a price watch list, and CamelCamelCamel will notify you as soon as it detects a sale. There are also plenty of tech sites that offer dedicated price trackers for Apple products, including iPhones. Some of the better ones include AppleInsiders iPhone Price Guide and 9to5Toys’ Apple tracker. The advantage of checking these sites is that they tend to show iPhone deals from across the web, not just on Amazon. MacPrices.net also keeps a good running list of iPhone deals. Use Google Chromes Shopping Insights and price tracking Yes, its somewhat ironic that Apple’s competitor, Google, can help you find a good deal on the iPhone. But it can. Google’s Chrome browser offers a feature called Shopping Insights that lets you view the price of a product over time, track its price, and receive notifications when the price drops. The tool is great for those looking for a deal on an iPhone (or any other product) but don’t want to check dedicated price-tracking websites multiple times a day. Shopping Insights is built into Chrome on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS and is simple to use. Just go to a retailers website and look up the iPhone you want to buy. In Chromes URL bar, youll see a shopping bag icon. Tap it to get shipping insights for your desired iPhone, click Save and Track Price, then turn on price notifications to be alerted when the iPhone you want goes on sale. (Full details about how to use Chromes Shopping Insights and price tracking tools can be found here.) Use ChatGPT to find the best holiday deals on iPhone The holidays are a busy time, so maybe you dont want to spend your time browsing price tracking websites or clicking around in Chrome to find iPhone deals. In that case, this final shopping hack to help you find a deal on an iPhone is probably for you: Just ask ChatGPT. Given that you can use ChatGPT to find deals on flights, it should be no surprise that you can also use OpenAIs chatbot to assist you in finding the best holiday shopping deals for an iPhone. I asked ChatGPT where I could buy an iPhone 16 with at least 256 GB of storage for the best deal right now, and the chatbot instantly returned a list of results showing a range of prices for the model, both new and used, along with direct links to where I could buy them. It was by far the easiest and fastest way to find iPhone deals out of all the methods above.
Category:
E-Commerce
Three years ago, if someone needed to fix a leaky faucet or understand inflation, they usually did one of three things: typed the question into Google, searched YouTube for a how-to video or shouted desperately at Alexa for help. Today, millions of people start with a different approach: They open ChatGPT and just ask. Im a professor and director of research impact and AI strategy at Mississippi State University Libraries. As a scholar who studies information retrieval, I see that this shift of the tool people reach for first for finding information is at the heart of how ChatGPT has changed everyday technology use. Change in searching The biggest change isnt that other tools have vanished. Its that ChatGPT has become the new front door to information. Within months of its introduction on Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT had 100 million weekly users. By late 2025, that figure had grown to 800 million. That makes it one of the most widely used consumer technologies on the planet. Surveys show that this use isnt just curiosityit reflects a real change in behavior. A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, roughly double the share found in 2023. Among adults under 30, a clear majority (58%) have tried it. An AP-NORC poll reports that about 60% of U.S. adults who use AI say they use it to search for information, making this the most common AI use case. The number rises to 74% for the under-30 crowd. Traditional search engines are still the backbone of the online information ecosystem, but the kind of searching people do has shifted in measurable ways since ChatGPT entered the scene. People are changing which tool they reach for first. For years, Google was the default for everything from how to reset my router to explain the debt ceiling. These basic informational queries made up a huge portion of search traffic. But these quick, clarifying, everyday what does this mean questions are the ones ChatGPT now answers faster and more cleanly than a page of links. And people have noticed. A 2025 U.S. consumer survey found that 55% of respondents now use OpenAIs ChatGPT or Googles Gemini AI chatbots about tasks they previously would have asked Google search to help them with, with even higher usage figures for the U.K. Another analysis of more than 1 billion search sessions found that traffic from generative AI platforms is growing 165 times faster than traditional searches, and about 13 million U.S. adults have already made generative AI their go-to tool for online discovery. This doesnt mean people have stopped Googling, but it means ChatGPT has peeled off the kinds of questions for which users want a direct explanation instead of a list of links. Curious about a policy update? Need a definition? Want a polite way to respond to an uncomfortable email? ChatGPT is faster, feels more conversational and feels more definitive. At the same time, Google isnt standing still. Its search results look different than they did three years ago because Google started weaving its AI system Gemini directly into the top of the page. The AI Overview summaries that appear above traditional search links now instantly answer many simple questionssometimes accurately, sometimes less so. But either way, many people never scroll past that AI-generated snapshot. This fact combined with the impact of ChatGPT are the reasons the number of zero-click searches has surged. One report using Similarweb data found that traffic from Google to news sites fell from over 2.3 billion visits in mid-2024 to under 1.7 billion in May 2025, while the share of news-related searches ending in zero clicks jumped from 56% to 69% in one year. Google search excels at pointing to a wide range of sources and perspectives, but the results can feel cluttered and designed more for clicks than clarity. ChatGPT, by contrast, delivers a more focused and conversational response that prioritizes explanation over ranking. The ChatGPT response can lack the source transparency and multiple viewpoints often found in a Google search. In terms of accuracy, both tools can occasionally get it wrong. Googles strength lies in letting users cross-check multiple sources, while ChatGPTs accuracy depends heavily on the quality of the prompt and the users ability to recognize when a response should be verified elsewhere. OpenAI is aiming to make it even more appealing to turn to ChatPGT first for search by trying to get people to use a browser with ChatGPT built in. Smart speakers and YouTube The impact of ChatGPT has reverberated beyond search engines. Voice assistants, such as Alexa speakers and Google Home, continue to report high ownership, but that number is down slightly. One 2025 summary of voice-search statistics estimates that about 34% of people ages 12 and up own a smart speaker, down from 35% in 2023. This is not a dramatic decline, but the lack of growth may indicate a shift of more complex queries to ChatGPT or similar tools. When people want a detailed explanation, a step-by-step plan or help drafting something, a voice assistant that answers in a short sentence suddenly feels limited. By contrast, YouTube remains a giant. As of 2024, it had approximately 2.74 billion users, with that number increasing steadily since 2010. Among U.S. teens, about 90% say they use YouTube, making it the most widely used platform in that age group. But what kind of videos people are looking for is changing. People now tend to start with ChatGPT and then move to YouTube if they need the additional information a how-to video conveys. For many everyday tasks, such as explain my health benefits or help me write a complaint email, people ask ChatGPT for a summary, script or checklist. They head to YouTube only if they need to seea physical process. You can see a similar pattern in more specialized spaces. Software engineers, for instance, have long relied on sites such as Stack Overflow for tips and pieces of software code. But question volume there began dropping sharply after ChatGPTs release, and one analysis suggests overall traffic fell by about 50% between 2022 and 2024. When a chatbot can generate a code snippet and an explanation on demand, fewer people bother typing a question into a public forum. So where does that leave us? Three years in, ChatGPT hasnt replaced the rest of the tech stack; its reordered it. The default search has shifted. Search engines are still for deep dives and complex comparisons. YouTube is still for seeing real people do real things. Smart speakers are still for hands-free convenience. But when people need to figure something out, many now start with a chat conversation, not a search box. Thats the real ChatGPT effect: It didnt just add another app to our phonesit quietly changed how we look things up in the first place. Deborah Lee is a professor and director of research impact and AI strategy at Mississippi State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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