You aren’t going to believe the latest lawsuit fad in America: suing companies as monopolistic for cutting prices to consumers. In legal mumbo jumbo, this is called “predatory pricing” — keeping prices lower than charged by competitors. The idea is to keep prices so low that rival firms can’t compete. Quick, throw Walmart, Home Depot, and McDonald’s in jail.
This is no joke. Recent news reports indicate that the so-called Main Street Competition Coalition, helmed by a former small and midsize grocery chain lobbyist, a Biden administration official, and trial lawyers, is lobbying to outlaw volume discounts under a 1936 law called the Robinson-Patman Act.
The RPA was intended to shield mom-and-pop stores from competition from chain stores offering bulk discounts. Until recently, history has largely recognized this foolish law as a New Deal mistake. It was left unforgotten until very recently. The Biden Federal Trade Commission under activist Chair Lina Khan dusted it off as a tool to more closely enforce “fairness” over competition, to much fanfare from liberal activists and ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Now, with the Trump FTC having fired aggressive commissioners like Khan and dropped Biden-era cases — and with Congress unlikely to pass new attempts to reinvigorate the RPA — its cheerleaders are now pivoting to the courtroom as a new arena in their fight to destroy these pricing discounts.
The “antitrust bar” confirms that the RPA could bring jackpot settlements against big box stores offering retail chain volume discounts under the guise of “price discrimination” lawsuits.
If the trial lawyers win, customers are forced to pay higher prices.
The RPA’s logic barely passed muster when chain stores were new. In 2026 America, the biggest nationwide retailers deliver economies of scale that keep prices low for millions and force competitors to work to do the same.
Far from corporate greed or anticompetitive behavior, competitive discounts driven by volume and supply chain efficiencies fuel free markets, helping families save money on groceries, appliances, TVs, cellphones, computers, and cars. Walmart alone has saved Americans tens of billions on low-price bulk sales.
Consider the Biden FTC’s abandoned PepsiCo case under Khan.
Pepsi faced bogus charges for making volume deals that let families buy soda 12-packs for a few bucks — not at the boutique pricing of a dollar per can. Trump’s FTC rightfully dropped it, but class-action sharks pounced on the same debunked claims to file their own lawsuits, signaling to every company: Fight to cut costs for shoppers and get sued.
But just who is getting hurt from charging low prices? Certainly not the customers, who line up in parking lots sometimes more than an hour before stores open to grab bargains. Yet the shark lawyers just need a few early wins to punish the big box retailers for offering cut-rate prices. If they win, get ready for an avalanche of lawsuits.
Take the case of New York’s Oreo meltdown. Mondelez, the maker of Oreos, Ritz, and Wheat Thins, quit direct deliveries to 1,000 New York City indie grocers like Foodtown and Key Food — citing parking and delivery woes — while serving ShopRite and Wegmans. Indies now pay wholesalers extra, jumping $5.99 Oreos to $6.99 and sparking RPA violation cries from the National Supermarket Association.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani says the state Senate’s proposed Consumer Grocery Pricing Fairness Act would ban favoring chains, ensuring Mondelez retreats entirely or passes indie delivery costs to all outlets — including high-volume, low-cost ones. New Yorkers lose cheaper, efficient options; everyone’s Oreos will cost more.
A recent study crunches the numbers: A Robinson-Patman type revival could spike grocery prices 5%-10% while gutting affordable options, slamming rural families and low-income communities hardest. That’s more than $500 extra annually for the typical family’s grocery bill — money that stays in working-class pockets when markets work freely — precisely while large volume retailers often provide the only real relief in this post-Biden inflation hangover.
This madness traces straight back to Khan’s war on companies — from soda bottlers to tech giants and even Uber-Lyft driver pay deals. But without the cudgel of a Khan-led FTC, the battle shifts to this lobbying and lawsuit effort evidently backed by more expensive retail outlets, which are planning a May 14 launch event to rally more plaintiffs against “dominant firms.”
Republicans and sensible Democrats should unite against this effort if they want to make America affordable again. The legal doctrine behind the RPA is obsolete as the black-and-white TV. Decades of sidelining this relic have unlocked markets to reward efficiency, innovation, and scale — delivering genuine consumer wins at the checkout line.
There is something wrong with our legal system if cutting prices is a crime. Laws that prosecute cost-cutting are only going to make America expensive again.
Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and the cofounder of Unleash Prosperity, which advocates for education freedom for all children.
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Left is worried about the consumer ,I am touched. Obamacare and Big pharma are good example of how much they care, I needed a small vial of eye drops, one month twice a day 182.00 dol for 60 drops. Is that affordable enough, left does not give a fig about the constituent, we’d be in the different boat if they did.
Force prices up and then campaign against Trump and Republican on “affordability”.
That said, there is an argument against *actual* predatory pricing (the above examples aren’t). That’s where an entity with deep pockets prices at below their own costs and loses money on each sale. Because they have deep pockets they can outlast their competition and when the competition falters they swoop in and buy them up for pennies on the dollar. That is, and should be, illegal. Rockefeller pioneered the practice and it’s how he built his monopoly over the oil business.
I’m just saying, we should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Get rid of the laws over bulk pricing, but keep the ones against *actual* predatory pricing.
So this is what grasping at straws looks like?!!! I wonder why attorneys need to dream up nonsense like this?!?! Are they struggling financially and can’t manage their control freak tendencies?!
The leftists want prices to go up to make Trump look bad. TDS is strong in these.
The place these lawyers should start is with Mamdani and his plan for the grocery store. Using taxpayer money so prices will be below what privately run stores can do, thereby driving them out of business.
My household bills all skyrocketed under Brandon’s henchman. No libs for me.
Congress is way overdue to pass tort reform laws. Frivolous lawsuits are harmful to this country. Just look back at the 1960s and later when some cities had gas wars to bring in customers & the consumers cheered for this.
Lawyers and politicians are a cancer on society.
Are lawyers this hard up for work? Maybe just greedy, looking for easy money. We’re the losers.
A new branding for ‘ambulance chasers’? Or are these just lazy, greedy lawyers? Seems kinda like the same thing. So we know for sure they don’t care about the average citizen’s income versus cost of living.
While the topic of remunerations, pricing, and free market activities is being bandied about, let’s have a deep and thoughtful look at how lawyers construct their fee schedules. Seems to me forty per cent off the top of a successful class action suit, condoned and awarded by presiding judges in most cases, is a bit stiff for the amount of money involved. If anyone is a legalized crook, it is…..
In what universe are these morons from? Prices on everything are always going up, normal people want the best deal they can get. I have to ask, are these people suing for higher prices immune from what they’re asking for or are they just plain stupid? Smells like a democrat.
Why do the libtards think we need nannies for everything? Leave us alone, period. Remember that “Life of Julia” horror video Obama put out? It showed the government being imposed on her from birth to the grave. Total nightmare fuel.
2 keep prices high & consumers lose
How can attorneys need to raise prices? It isn’t as if there are fewer cases for them to handle. Half of the ads on TV are for lawyers who will get you a lot of money from that accident or for your injured back so you can go on “disability”! Good grief!
Trump tariffs have resulted in higher prices in USA for many items. Some of the tariffs will cause the price to rise so that it will cost just as much as what the other country can sell it for. This is supposed to bring jobs back to America, but will the lawyers sue over this tariff cost in the future?