Sen. Warren: With Food Prices Top of Mind for Voters, President Biden Should Take New Executive Action
By Senator Elizabeth Warren
Americans are struggling to keep up with corporate price gouging at the grocery store. From eggs to potato chips, it seems like everything is getting more expensive. In fact, since January 2020, food prices have risen by 26% overall, including a 29% rise for cereals and bakery items, and a 27% increase for meat, poultry, fish, and eggs.
Some will tell you that’s inflation, but that’s not the whole story. What they’re not telling you is that corporate profits have increased by 75% since 2020 — far outpacing inflation. Giant companies are making record profits by hiking prices. And don’t take my word for it, take the word of Big Food CEOs who get on their conference calls and tell their investors that they’re using inflation as an excuse to raise prices way above costs. Beyond that, these companies use a number of tricks and traps to cut out competition, which raises costs even further.
As a result, food prices have become one of voters’ top priorities heading into the November election. Recent Data for Progress polling found that 88% of voters are concerned about inflation, and when asked what costs they’re most concerned about, food prices overwhelmingly rise to the top.
That’s why President Biden has made lowering costs his top priority. Already, President Biden has taken critical steps to rein in grocery costs, and as a result, food inflation has finally begun to ease. But here’s the thing: There are even more tools that he can use with his existing executive authority to help lower Americans’ grocery bills and take on the powerful corporate interests that are keeping food prices too high.
Last week, I joined Representative Jim McGovern and dozens of other lawmakers to urge the president to pick up those tools and use the full scope of his executive authority to lower food costs. These actions would target the food and grocery giants that have raised prices on consumers and shut out smaller competitors — all while raking in record profits.
And here’s the thing: Those executive actions are popular. New Data for Progress polling finds that voters across party lines support the executive actions proposed in our letter. A majority of voters support increasing lawsuits against food producers that engage in price fixing (78%), creating a new task force to investigate grocery stores and corporate food producers that raise prices to maximize profits (69%), and regulating slotting fees — the fees that food producers pay to appear on grocery stores’ shelves — to make them more equitable for smaller food producers (68%).
More broadly, a majority of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans support increased regulations on food and grocery giants that raise prices to maximize profits.
Now is the time for the Biden administration to take additional actions to fight corporate monopolies and help lower costs for all Americans.
Additionally, voters across party lines (75%) support cracking down on food producers and large grocery stores that illegally charge higher prices to smaller grocery stores.
Americans are approaching the November election with particular concern over high prices at the grocery checkout line. Many in our country — particularly the poorest, who spent 25% of their income on groceries in 2022 — would benefit enormously from strong action to regulate the corporate food producers and large grocery stores that are taking advantage of working people.
President Biden has taken major steps to fight Big Food’s corporate greed and to help American families. And with this new polling, it’s clear that Americans have his back, and are supporting him in doing even more to hold food industry giants accountable.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) is a Democrat from Massachusetts.