Unhinged Democrats Want Biden To Find That Grocery Stores Are Price Fixing

The idea here is to Blame grocery stores for artificially creating high prices so that they can say that food inflation is not the fault of Democrats and Joe Biden. They’ve decided that grocery stores are their new enemy of the state

Democrats Ask Biden to Investigate Grocery Store Price-Fixing

A group of Democratic lawmakers are calling on President Joe Biden to investigate grocery store chains for price manipulation, writing in a letter sent Monday morning that he should use executive authority to take additional enforcement action to address rising food prices without the help of Congress.

The letter, shared exclusively with TIME, comes after a report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that major grocery chains seemed to take advantage of supply chain disruptions during the pandemic to hike up prices to increase their profits. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who led the letter and is one of its signatories, has called for more competition and stronger enforcement of antitrust laws to bring down grocery prices for families—but her proposed legislation on the topic has been largely stalled in Congress.

She’s now hoping that Biden will leverage his executive authority to initiate a thorough investigation into the alleged price-fixing practices of major grocery store chains. “Big food companies want to keep these huge profits and they’re hiring plenty of lobbyists to keep Congress from acting,” Warren tells TIME in an interview. “Congress has stalled out on doing work that it could do to help families lower costs… and the President has the tools to fight back.”

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Martin Heinrich (D-N. Mex.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Peter Welch (I-Vt.) also signed on to the letter requesting Biden’s intervention, along with 35 House Democrats. The lawmakers outlined several proposals in their letter that the Biden Administration could take—from encouraging the FTC to issue guidance on potential violations of price discrimination laws, to creating a joint task force to investigate food price manipulation throughout the supply chain.

Even if they did raise prices beyond what was reasonable, so what? That’s 100% illegal. They can charge what they want. But, really, a lot of the report is along the lines of “suggests”, as in, “we think they really did this, but, we aren’t quite sure, because business happens, big stores have more leverage, and the world was disrupted from the Chinese coronavirus and Democrats shutting businesses down.”

Wages are up. Utility costs up. Insurance costs up. Property taxes up. Maintenance costs up. Input costs up. Cost of borrowed money up. Transportation costs up. This not only applies to grocers but to the growers and processors of food products. How do you think prices can stay where they were when there is cost increases every step of the way from production to retail? And with fuel way up, that will effect almost every part of getting food to the stores and in your basket.

But, also, does the Biden admin actually have the statutory authority to do this investigation? The story really doesn’t say. Obviously, Democrats want to blame grocery stores, not China for releasing COVID and Democrats for shutting things down, but, what else is in play?

The letter underscores what many progressive Democrats and liberal economic minds see as an urgent need for regulatory intervention to level the playing field in the food and grocery sector, ensuring fair competition and affordable prices for consumers nationwide. Studies have found that corporate profits account for more than 50% of current inflation as many American families are being hit with higher costs for groceries. In the food industry alone, four retailers—Walmart, Kroger, Costco, and Albertsons—account for over a third of national grocery sales, potentially allowing dominant retailers to extract more favorable prices and terms from suppliers.

Hmm, having Government take massive control of the food sector? What could possibly go wrong?

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