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Sponsored by:
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who generously
supports
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BREAKING NEWS from The
Energy Marketers of America
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January 17, 2025
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FTC Reinforces Robinson-Patman to Combat Power Buyers and Protect Main Street Competition
Friday,
January 17, 2025
– Today,
the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) doubled
down on the
Robinson-Patman Act by
taking action to address
excessive use of buyer
power in the grocery and
food retail marketplace.
The FTC voted 3-2 to
challenge price
discrimination demanded
by a dominant retail
chain that put
independent retailers at
a disadvantage and harm
competition in the food
retail sector.
Just one month ago, the
FTC filed the first
Robinson-Patman
enforcement case in
decades, accusing the
nation’s largest alcohol
distribution company of
illegal price
discrimination. Today’s
case revives
prohibitions in the RPA
intended to address
price discrimination
through advertising and
promotional allowances.
The move by the FTC
signals that the agency
is serious about any
attempt to undermine all
of Robinson-Patman's
prohibitions against
price discrimination. It
will give food product
suppliers and
agriculture producers
the ability to say “no”
to costly and unjust
demands of power buyers
and will help food
producers run their
businesses, not their
largest customers.
“America’s
independent convenience
stores are thrilled with
today’s FTC Action,"
said Rob Underwood,
President of the Energy
Marketers of America.
“The RPA will level the
playing field for
retailers across all
channels of trade who
are forced to purchase
products at higher
prices than are offered
to the nation’s largest
retail chains.”
“The FTC’s
lawsuit focuses on the
core of the problem, one
dominant retailer
abusing its market power
to coerce suppliers into
making unreasonable and
costly concessions,”
said Chris Jones, Chief
Government Relations
Officer & Counsel at the
National Grocers
Association. “Suppliers
pay dearly for the
privilege of doing
business with these
massive corporations,
and the cost gets passed
on to everyone else.”
The prohibition
in Robinson-Patman that
curbs buyer power
coercion has been all
but nullified by the
courts in the 90-year
legal history of the
Act. The sharpest tools
available to the FTC are
the supplier
prohibitions, which have
to be proved in order to
bring enforcement action
against retail power
buyers. The Main Street
Competition Coalition
consists of agriculture
producer groups who
recognize the importance
of robust enforcement of
seller provisions to
realign bargaining
asymmetries used to
undermine the
competitive process.
“While this new suit
targets a major beverage
company, it’s the
nation’s largest
retailers that make
unreasonable demands
every day to agriculture
producers and even
demand trade terms that
break the law” said
Sarah Carden, a farmer
and Research and Policy
Development Director at
Farm Action. “The FTC’s
two Robinson-Patman
enforcement actions will
give our agriculture
producers more power to
reject trade terms by
large grocery retailers
that harm our growers
and our ability to sell
our products under fair
terms to all of our
customers.”
The
Main Street Competition
Coalition, a broad
alliance of businesses
of all sizes, as well as
farmers and ranchers,
has fought for years to
bring attention to
market abuses that make
it harder for Americans
to get a good deal at
the checkout counter.
The coalition urges the
FTC and Congress to
focus on 21st-Century
solutions to close the
loopholes allowing
powerful corporations to
ignore the law. National
Trade Association
members of the MSCC
include the National
Grocers Association,
National Community
Pharmacists Association,
American Beverage
Licensees, Energy
Marketers of America and
other restaurant and
retail groups.
CONTACT:
cjones@nationalgrocers.org;
runderwood@emamerica.org
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