By Edward Lynn
Editor
On March 10th Chuck Grassley, the Senior U.S. Senator from Iowa, released his weekly Capitol Hill Report interview for the 11th week of 2025. Senator Grassley was interviewed by Abby Ward of Carroll Broadcasting, and Jake Bourgeois of the Dyersville Commercial.
Topics included egg prices, bird flu, tariffs, market regulation, measles, vaccination, and the Halt Fentanyl Act.
Listen to the interview below:
Transcript:
Narrator: The following is an unrehearsed interview with Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley. Participating in today’s public affairs program are Abby Ward with Carroll Broadcasting and Jake Bourgeois with the Dyersville Commercial. Abby, can you start us off with a question for Senator Grassley
Abby Ward: Thank you. Senator Grassley, so over the weekend, it was announced that the DOJ is investigating and doing, looking for price fixing, for egg prices. Can you elaborate a little more on that? What is the DOJ looking to maybe find? And what are they looking to accomplish with this investigation?
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley: I think they’re looking for, in the same way in the case of eggs as they would any antitrust violation, to see if there’s any collusion against people that produce the eggs, and that collusion could say, you know, we’re gonna hold eggs off of the market, or we’re gonna charge a certain price. All that stuff’s illegal. I think it’s pretty hard to nail proof down of price fixing, but I applaud the Justice Department for looking into it, because there might be such collusion among big egg producers. I hope not. I hope the market is working the way it should, and we’ll just have to wait and see what she finds out. Jake?
Jake Bourgeois: To follow up on that one a little bit. Have you been talking to people? Have you been able to get a sense of what they’re thinking on how long it might take for the market to regulate? Or is that one of those things where it’s still hard to tell at this point, you know how long it might take for factors to bring those down.
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley: Yeah, I have not had communication on this, but I can tell you that there is a certain period of time, and I don’t know what that time is, but it’s not a short period of time when you kill 160 million chickens, and that’s really over a four year period of time. So this would be a rolling average. But whatever time when you kill millions of chickens, how long is it before you can replenish your houses and these chickens become old enough to start laying eggs, and we’re talking about weeks, maybe a few months. I don’t really know what how long the period of time is there, but that’s what we’re going through now. And it’s complicated by the fact that bird flu is also killing a lot of baby chicks before they ever get to the point of getting into the house to lay eggs, and I just can’t multiply all that out for you. But until the industry is back up and running again, there’s going to be a shortage of eggs. And see what we can do about that. I can’t do much about it. You gotta have chickens to lay eggs. Which comes first the chicken or the egg? Well, in this case, the chickens come first. Abby?
Abby Ward: Thank you. All right, so my next question is going to be on the proposed tariffs that Trump wants to put on Mexico, Canada and China. So with that being said, what is kind of the next steps that would be happening if these would get implemented, and how is that potentially going to affect the trade from industry, from Canada and these places?
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley: Okay, well, first of all, there’s a certain amount of uncertainty that comes with putting tariffs on and then delaying them for a month. That uncertainty, I think, affects the economy, both from producer standpoint and a consumer standpoint. And then we’re told that in Canada to Mexico, that they go on full force April the second. Just some idea of how it affects. You know, we all let’s look at agriculture. We already have a 20% increase in input costs from the Biden inflation, and then you put a tariff on 25% on potash coming in from Canada, and that’s going to increase the cost of the consumer now the President said, at least initially, that’s only going to be 10% but 10% is still too much if you aren’t making any money with $4.20 cent corn, at least, that’s what it was last week at New Hartford. So that’s some of the problems you have. But the uncertainty is the thing that is the most dangerous about these tariffs, whether it’s Mexico, Canada, China, or eventually hitting Europe. So the uncertainty is going to reduce economic activity. I don’t think it’s going to put us in a recession, but it could. Jake?
Jake Bourgeois: Obviously, Texas has been going through a measles outbreak, and now more cases are starting to sort of pop up around the country. What are you sort of monitoring as this outbreak spreads?
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley: Well, fortunately, it hasn’t hit Iowa yet, and maybe only about 10 or 12 states. But it’s a very dangerous situation, the worst in 10 or 15 years. That’s important. And then you get the fact that the number of vaccinations for measles has deteriorated a little to some extent, particularly in these parts of the country, I believe. And then it’s highly contagious, and the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to stay on top of it. Some people are trying to blame Kennedy, because he has been said to be against vaccines, but he cleared that up very much when he was up for confirmation in the United States Senate. He says, If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated. I just want to make sure it’s safe. That’s part of the federal government’s responsibility to make two things come out of anything approved by FDA that it’s effective and that it’s safe. And that’s just what he’s doing. And he would tell you, if you want to be vaccinated, get vaccinated, but the government shouldn’t force you to get vaccinated. Abby?
Abby Ward: Thank you. So my next question is going to be on a bill that you helped lead last week called the Halt Fentanyl Act. So I know that it does three things. Can you kind of go over what that bill is going to all entail, and what you are looking to have that outcome be for American citizens.
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley: Number one, it does what we’ve been doing nine times in the last six years, extending the scheduling of fentanyl and its analogs. And the analogs are the most important thing, because fentanyl is schedule one anyway, but the analogs have not been so it just makes that permanent, so we don’t have to extend it from time to time. Secondly, it would put in place the fact that the criminal fines or sentencing and all that would follow what the courts are doing now, but it would put it in statute. And then the last thing, it allows for medical research. Because there’s some question if something scheduled, schedule one, the extent to which it can be used for medical research. And we-and there are some good uses of fentanyl, the problem is we need this permanent legislation to make sure that the analogs can be a crime regardless of their chemical makeup, because you can say something’s illegal today and the chemist tomorrow can change the makeup and it could be legal. You can’t have that uncertainty. Jake, you’ve got the last question.
Jake Bourgeois: So going back to the topics of vaccines, again, there was a report that HHS is asking the CDC to do another study between trying to look at possible links between vaccines and autism, despite multiple studies showing that there is no link. Do you think this is a good use of the department’s resources and if there, and what do you think they’re hoping to gain by running another study on this topic?
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley: Well, I think you said accurately, and if I’m read you wrong, you correct me that the connection between vaccines and autism has not been proven. Beyond that, I think that we still have to find out why we’ve had a tremendous increase in autism, regardless of whether it’s connect to vaccines or not, and I think that you’re going to find the new Secretary of HHS wanting to pursue that. Thank you all very much.
Abby Ward: Thank you, Senator.
Narrator: Thank you Abby and Jake for participating in today’s public affairs program. This has been Senator Chuck Grassley reporting to the people of Iowa.
