The evidence that price gouging was responsible for the post-pandemic spike in food prices is somewhere between thin and nonexistent. A recent report from the New York Federal Reserve found that retail food inflation was mainly driven by “much higher food commodity prices and large increases in wages for grocery store workers,” while profits at grocers and food manufacturers “haven’t been important.” ....
... Even if excessive corporate profits had been the cause of higher food costs, a price-gouging ban would do nothing to relieve Americans’ current burdens for the simple reason that food prices long ago stopped rising. .... In reality, the grocery business has always had notoriously thin profit margins. ... the industry’s average net profit margins were just 1.18 percent in January 2024—ranking 80th of the 96 industries surveyed and lower than the margins the food industry recorded in all but one of the past six years .... As economics textbooks and centuries of experience teach us, limiting the amount that companies can charge is more likely to reduce supply by discouraging investment and production: a recipe for both shortages and higher, not lower, prices in the long term. ...
In addition to tariffs, regulatory protectionism—against imported products such as tuna, catfish, and biofuel inputs—causes more consumer pain for little health, safety, or environmental gain. ... Propping up the domestic food sector is a long-standing American tradition. (read it all)
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