The Harris-Walz campaign is set to propose a federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries.” On Friday, August 16 the campaign will hold a rally in North Carolina, during which Harris will announce her broader economic goals, with a focus on reining in the cost of living. “There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign said in a statement to NBC. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
This comes as good news to anyone who recently went shopping for some basic baking supplies and got a receipt for $64 (say, your friendly local author). Though economists insist the economy is doing fine, the average cost of living feels unsustainable to many, with food prices 21 percent higher than they were three years ago, wages stagnating or even falling, and no one able to afford rent on minimum wage. Yes, unemployment might be low, but clearly employment is not letting a lot of people live comfortably.
Part of the plan is to crack down on mergers between large food groups, such as the Kroger-Albertsons merger, which would create the second largest retail chain in the country unless the FTC’s suit to block the merger is successful (however, as of now that is seeming unlikely). There was the announcement August 14 that Mars is buying Kellanova, the sellers of brands like Eggo, Pop-Tarts, and Cheez-Its, for $30 billion.
Mergers like these allow fewer people to dictate not just the price of food, but what food is even available to the average consumer. “Kroger’s acquisition of Albertsons would lead to additional grocery price hikes for everyday goods, further exacerbating the financial strain consumers across the country face today,” Henry Liu, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, previously said in a press release.
Frustration around exorbitant grocery prices has been building for a while. “Decades of failure by federal leaders to tackle food monopolies have sent grocery prices skyrocketing. President Biden finally turned the corner with real action against ill-advised corporate mergers, and the Harris campaign’s signals of intent to work even harder against food profiteering are encouraging,” said Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Action, the lobbying arm of the sustainable food and climate nonprofit Food & Water Watch, in a statement to Eater. “We look forward to seeing robust antitrust policy that will make a difference in our wallets, and send the food monopolies packing.”
Harris, if elected, will indeed be following in President Joe Biden’s footsteps. In May, the Biden administration released a statement saying it had met with CEOs of major grocery chains to ask them to lower prices, noting the “record profits” these companies have made in recent years. According to Forbes, “the average CEO to worker pay ratio was 324 to 1, up 23 percent” from 2019 to 2022, noting many food companies are raising prices to pad profits. For example, “in 2022-2023 Kraft Heinz profits skyrocketed from $225 million to $887 million, an increase of 448 percent,” says Forbes, as the company raised consumer prices 21 percent on popular brands like Velveeta, Lunchables, and Oscar Mayer.
Harris is supposedly setting her sights on the meat industry specifically, saying “soaring meat prices have accounted for a large part of Americans’ higher grocery bills, even as meat processing companies registered record-breaking profits following the pandemic.” Presumably, meat processing companies would face fines from the FTC or state attorneys general for price gouging.
In the meantime, The FTC is making its own attempts to crack down high grocery prices. The organization has proposed an inquiry into why prices remain high after inflation has come down. In a public meeting earlier this month, FTC Chair Lina Khan said, “We want to make sure that major businesses are not exploiting their power to inflate prices for American families at the grocery store.”
