Month: July 2026

Is the Price-Fixing Crackdown for Real?

Throughout his second term, Donald Trump has struggled to find an effective message on the issue of inflation. For a time, he tried to deny the problem existed, choosing to depict the affordability crisis as an invention of the Democrats.

Then he concocted far-fetched claims such as the idea that “illegal aliens” were to blame. After his attack on Iran caused fuel and other prices to shoot up, Trump insisted the increase would last only a short time.

Now, at long last, Trump seems to be acknowledging that inflation is real and the government needs to do something about it. Yet, of course, he wants to give the impression he can solve the problem with what amounts to a wave of a magic wand. He just tried that by taking credit for some selective grocery price reductions announced by Walmart, only to end up with egg on his face when the retailer disclosed that the cuts were scheduled well before Trump stepped in.

Apart from Trump’s antics, some parts of the administration are taking a more serious approach by focusing on one of the  more significant causes of high prices: collusion among producers.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission put out a statement saying they are taking a close look at anti-competitive practices  in the gasoline industry while also urging state attorneys general to conduct investigations and bring appropriate enforcement actions.

Around the same time, the DOJ and state AGs announced that they had been working together to investigate actions by the country’s largest egg producers to inflate prices by manipulating an industry benchmark rate. Companies such as Cal-Maine agreed to settle the case by paying the states $3.3 million in cash and donating over 50 million eggs to food banks and community organizations.

Earlier, there were reports that the DOJ was investigating the big meatpacking companies to determine whether they are manipulating the price of beef. This came after Trump made some fleeting social media comments about collusion in the industry.

These moves by DOJ and the FTC stand in contrast to the lackluster approach to antitrust that has marked Trump 2.0, especially when it comes to criminal price fixing cases. Yet it is unclear how seriously they should be taken. They may be little more than another facet of the administration’s current effort to give the impression it is getting tougher on price manipulation–to placate angry voters until after the midterms–while not much may actually change.

The emphasis on the state AGs in the DOJ-FTC statement may be setting the stage for passing the blame when little comes of the initiative.

If the administration were serious about addressing price manipulation, the place to look would be the realm of private litigation. Class action lawsuits have been filed alleging price fixing abuses in industries ranging from pork products to PVC piping. Tens of millions of dollars in settlements have been reached.

Back in the 1960s the country was riveted by a case in which managers at more than two dozen electrical equipment manufacturers, including General Electric and Westinghouse, were charged with price-fixing and bid-rigging for heavy-duty utility equipment. Some of the defendants ended up serving prison time.

Until we see corporate executives being led away in handcuffs and put on trial, the Trump administration’s campaign against price-fixing cannot be taken too seriously.

Trump’s Interventionist Power Trip

Dual Freq, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Donald Trump may have thought that giving a 250th Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore would help his shameless effort to have his image added to those of Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln.

Instead, what he earned is an eventual spot at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Appleton, Wisconsin, the final resting place of Sen. Joe McCarthy. That’s because Trump devoted a significant portion of his address to the kind of crude Communist scare rhetoric McCarthy employed to such harmful effect 70 years ago.

Trump’s Red Scare revival is his response to the growing political success of candidates identifying themselves as democratic socialists. Ignoring the policies these candidates actually endorse, Trump conflated socialism with communism and denounced both as threats to American liberty in the most simplistic terms.

It is unclear whether Trump is aware that the key characteristic of socialism is government control of the means of production, especially major industries. Someone should point out to him that his administration has moved the country further in that direction than any president since FDR.

Over the past year, Trump has pressured various corporations to give the federal government partial ownership or control of their operations, or a share of their profits.

After reversing the Biden Administration’s rejection of Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel, Trump obtained a golden share that gave the federal government a substantial amount of influence over the company.

In exchange for permission to export certain AI chips to China, Nvidia and AMD had to agree to hand over 15 percent of their Chinese revenue to Uncle Sam.

The federal government took an equity stake of nearly 10 percent in Intel, which was financed in part by converting grants the company was supposed to receive under the Biden-era CHIPS and Science Act.

The Pentagon invested $400 million in MP Materials, a company created to reduce U.S. dependence on China for rare earth resources, positioning the government as the company’s largest shareholder with an effective 15 percent stake.

The Trump Administration signed an $80 billion strategic partnership with Westinghouse Electric to build nuclear power plants across the country. The arrangement could end up with a 20 percent stake in Westinghouse, whose current majority owner is Brookfield Asset Management.

The administration signed preliminary agreements to provide $2 billion in funding and take equity stakes in nine companies, including IBM, involved in quantum computing.  

According to the Council on Foreign Relations’ U.S. Government Deal Tracker, the federal government has negotiated equity stakes and other forms of involvement in at least 30 companies.

Previous presidents took such actions reluctantly, usually as part of bailouts meant to address financial crises, and they arranged it so that federal investments were time-limited. Trump, by contrast, relishes his interventions and seems to be angling for many more.

While some of the investments may make economic sense, there is little indication that they are part of a coherent strategy or that they are providing real benefits to the public. Instead, the deals often seem to be motivated mainly by Trump’s desire to exercise control over as many things as possible. They are less a matter of industrial policy than they are additional fuel for a never-ending power trip.

It may also turn out that these deals, like so much of what the administration does, are somehow enriching Trump family interests.

Trump may think that rekindling old-style red-baiting will help Republicans in the mid-term election, but this tactic cannot hide the fact that his economic policies are failing to serve the needs of the vast majority of the population.

Presidential Capture

For many years, the U.S. regulatory system has been hampered by the excessive influence large corporations and trade associations exercise over the agencies. Critics call this regulatory capture.

With its sweeping new ruling establishing the right of the president to fire agency commissioners at will, the Supreme Court has created another impediment to effective oversight of business. Let’s call it presidential capture.

In theory, giving the White House absolute control over the leadership of the agencies could be a good thing—if the President in office strongly believed in curbing corporate abuses. That is far from the case with regard to the current occupant of the Oval Office. Trump regards the regulatory agencies the same way he views the Justice Department—as a means to reward his friends and punish his perceived enemies. The rewards include deregulatory policies such as severe cutbacks in environmental protection, while the punishments include moves such as the FCC’s threats to rescind the licenses of television networks that don’t adhere to MAGA ideology.

From the point of view of corporate accountability, now is the worst possible time to give the president more power over regulation. For all of their limitations, the formerly independent agencies have engaged in a significant amount of enforcement. My colleagues and I have been documenting those efforts in Violation Tracker. Here are some highlights of the track records of the major agencies now effectively under Trump’s thumb.

Securities and Exchange Commission. Created in 1934, the SEC oversees securities markets and protects investors. Among other things, it helps to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. For the period from 2000 to the present, Violation Tracker documents more than 3,000 successful enforcement actions against companies, with total penalties of $45 billion. For example, in 2020 Wells Fargo paid a penalty of $500 million in connection with the bogus bank accounts scandal.

Federal Trade Commission. With responsibilities relating to consumer protection and merger oversight, the FTC, created in 1914, has completed more than 600 successful enforcement actions against companies since 2000, collecting $19 billion in penalties. Among its biggest cases was a $5 billion penalty imposed on Facebook in 2019 for deceiving users about its privacy policies.

Environmental Protection Agency. Created in 1970, the EPA is charged with enforcing laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Since 2000, it has collected more than $70 billion in penalties from some 22,000 enforcement actions. Among its most significant cases was a $14 billion settlement in 2016 with Volkswagen relating to allegations that the automaker rigged emissions tests to deceive regulators and the public about the amount of pollution generated by its vehicles.

National Labor Relations Board. Established in 1935, the role of the NLRB is to safeguard the right of workers to organize and to remedy unfair labor practices. Violation Tracker documents only those cases in which an employer agreed to provide back pay to workers improperly fired for union activity. Not all of these agreements are made public. The database contains data on more than 14,000 cases in which $1.7 billion in back pay was disclosed. The largest case involved a $130 million payment by Alcatel-Lucent, now Nokia, in 2001.

There are a couple of dozen other entities that were set up as independent agencies whose independence has now been obliterated by the Supreme Court. One notable exception is the Federal Reserve, which it is worth noting is not only the country’s central bank but also one of the agencies that regulate banks.

The Fed oversees bank holding companies and some state-chartered banks. Since 2000, the Fed has brought some 185 successful enforcement actions against such banks, collecting over $7 billion in penalties. For example, in 2015 the Fed imposed $1.8 billion in fines on six major banks for abuses relating to foreign exchange markets.

The Supreme Court’s decision to prevent Trump from ousting Fed governor Lisa Cook on the same day it established the president’s right to fire commissioners at will at every other regulatory agency shows the arbitrary nature of the Court’s action.

SCOTUS’s effective abolition of independent regulatory agencies is less a victory for Trump than it is the culmination of a decades-long effort to consolidate presidential control of the executive branch, in part to protect the interests of big business. The Right may be celebrating now, but it may later come to regret its success. If the country ever elects a truly progressive president, the tables will be turned and it will be a lot easier to hold corporations to account.