Congress--ask the FTC to investigate Kroger’s proposed merger with Albertsons.

Last week, grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons announced their plan to merge and form a megacorporation. The move would combine Safeway, Ralphs, Smith’s, Fred Meyer, Vons, Kings, Haggen, Tom Thumb, Harris Teeter, Dillons, Star Market, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, and more into a single corporation. The costs to consumers would be catastrophic. The profits for shareholders would be enormous. Please make sure the Federal Trade Commission blocks this anticompetitive and disastrous deal!   Grocery corporations are already taking advantage of inflation to artificially inflate food prices — prices have gone up 11% in the past year alone. The Kroger-Albertsons deal would leave Americans even more vulnerable to corporate price gouging. We’d likely see higher prices, employee layoffs and weaker supply chains. Kroger and Albertsons are promising they’ll “spin off” some of the grocery stores into a separate entity that will supposedly compete with Kroger-Albertsons grocery stores. But we saw this move back in 2014 when Albertsons acquired Safeway. Unsurprisingly, the least profitable stores were “spun off”; many failed; and giant food deserts resulted, forcing people to travel long distances for groceries or even rely on food banks for food.  As your constituent I’m urging you to ask the FTC to thoroughly investigate supermarket giant Kroger’s proposed merger with Albertsons. A merger of the nation’s first- and fourth-largest supermarket companies is liable to enrich shareholders while harming virtually everyone else — particularly those communities most vulnerable to food deserts and grocery price hyperinflation. Thanks.