Trump’s mass deportation plan could have a big impact on inflation

The US saw inflation cool in 2024, but economists warn that President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to mass deport undocumented immigrants could have a big impact on prices.

“Certainly the economic effects will be felt,” said David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. “There will be problems with the supply chain. There will be increases in prices, decreases in services.”

Experts worry that deporting so many undocumented immigrants at once could create a gap in the workforce. A 2023 study in the Journal of Labor Economics For every 500,000 immigrants removed from the labor force, 44,000 US-born workers could lose their jobs.

“Immigrants, particularly unauthorized immigrants, are more likely to work in the kinds of jobs that create the goods and services that we see prices rising,” said Chloe East, a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research. was also one of the researchers behind the 2023 study.

“We can’t say exactly what the characteristics will be,” he said. “But based on what we know from past mass deportation efforts, it appears that goods and services where unauthorized immigrants are super-concentrated, such as construction and agriculture, will likely have higher prices, not lower prices, as a result of mass deportation efforts.”

follow video Above to learn what other economic effects mass deportation could have on the United States