Stop the Biden Antitrust Agenda From Hijacking America First | The American Spectator

There’s a strange, new, anti-commonsense push happening in Washington, and it’s not coming from the usual suspects on the left. Some voices on the right are starting to flirt with the idea of reviving an obscure law called the Robinson-Patman Act — passed in 1936 to “protect” mom-and-pop stores from chain retailers by stopping suppliers from offering different prices to different buyers.

Make no mistake: Dusting off this Depression-era relic would be nothing more than doing the leftists’ work for them while raising prices for Americans. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and key allies in the Biden administration had been leading a campaign for years to revive the law because they see the  classic New Deal, big-government attempt to micromanage the marketplace by freezing business relationships in amber and punishing efficiency as part of a progressive future.

Back then, Washington thought it could legislate prosperity by telling wholesalers they couldn’t give a better price to a big customer than a small one, even if that customer was more efficient to serve. The problem? That approach has never made sense in a dynamic, competitive economy, and that’s why the law has not really been enforced since the 1980s.

The data tells a different story than the feel-good talking points from Robinson-Patman’s boosters. A 1977 Justice Department report documented how Robinson-Patman resulted in higher prices and price-fixing among competitors, which led to reduced enforcement of the law. And according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, bringing back enforcement wouldn’t create more competition.

Rather, it would raise the cost of groceries and other household goods by punishing the very efficiencies that keep prices down. Volume discounts and streamlined supply chains are part of what lets large retailers deliver lower prices to customers. Undermining that model would mean fewer options, slower innovation, and higher prices at checkout.

We want businesses — large and small — to compete on price, innovation, and service. We don’t want federal regulators in the back room deciding who can get a discount and who can’t. That’s not capitalism. That’s central planning with a smiling face.

The Biden-Lina Khan FTC had been on a mission to bring this bad law back from the dead before voters threw them out. In the final days of the Biden administration, they launched high-profile lawsuits against companies like Pepsi and Southern Glazer’s, accusing them of giving big buyers a better deal. The Pepsi case was so flimsy that the new FTC chairman — appointed by President Trump — threw it out unanimously, calling it a “partisan stunt” that wasted taxpayer dollars.

And yet, there still seems to be an appetite for making Robinson-Patman enforcement part of the “America First” economic agenda. I can’t think of anything less America First. Why on earth would we help Biden’s FTC lock in its dream of bureaucrats picking winners and losers in the grocery aisle?

Supporters claim this is about helping small businesses and lowering costs. But history — and basic economics — tell a different story. When you ban suppliers from offering volume discounts, you raise costs for everyone. That means higher grocery prices for working families, fewer competitive deals, and less incentive for businesses to innovate their supply chains. The last thing struggling Americans need right now is another government mandate that drives prices up and shelves empty.

If the America First movement stands for anything, it’s for rejecting the idea that Washington knows best. We believe in unleashing our producers, empowering entrepreneurs, and letting the market work — not importing a 90-year-old law straight out of the FDR playbook and calling it “populism.” Real populism is making life easier for the people who grow, make, and sell things in this country. It is not about empowering the FTC to micromanage how they do it.

The Biden team couldn’t get this agenda through Congress. They knew Robinson-Patman could be enforced without a single new vote in the House or Senate, just by changing priorities inside the FTC. That’s why we should be doubly suspicious when we hear calls from the right to “stand up to big box stores” by using Biden’s own playbook.

We’ve seen this movie before: a well-meaning policy is sold as “leveling the playing field” but ends up doing the opposite: hurting consumers, shrinking competition, and handing more power to unelected bureaucrats. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

The America First movement is about building an economy that works for the people, not the regulators. Reviving Robinson-Patman would be a step backward into Biden’s vision of a managed economy. We should leave this 1930s relic where it belongs — in the history books — and focus on creating a future where American workers, farmers, and businesses can compete and win without Washington’s thumb on the scale.

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