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antitrust
Trump FTC Urged to Probe Egg Giants Reaping 'Dramatic' Profits by Keeping Prices High
"Evidence indicates that by not increasing their supply, the five dominant egg firms are forcing prices to stay high while reporting dramatic profit increases and level sales," according to the group Farm Action.
Feb 12, 2025
An advocacy group dedicated to fighting corporate agriculture monopolies on Wednesday urged federal antitrust enforcers to take action against egg producers that the group accuses of taking advantage of the bird flu crisis in order to raise prices, inflate their profits, and consolidate their market power.
What's more, the slow recovery of "flock size"—the total number of egg-laying hens—"despite historically high prices, further suggests coordinated efforts to restrict supply and sustain inflated prices" that warrants investigation, according to a letter sent by Farm Action president Angela Huffman to Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson and Acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed Assefi, who has been tapped to temporarily lead the DOJ antitrust division.
The letter, which invokes the behavior of "dominant egg producers," largely provides data on one company, Cal-Maine Foods, the biggest producer and marketer of shell eggs in the country.
Separately, Democratic voices are urging the Trump administration to take action around corporate conduct as it relates to food prices. FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, a Biden appointee, has also urged Ferguson to open an investigation into egg production and marketing practices—pointing to a 2023 request from Farm Action to the FTC to investigate potential antitrust violations in the egg industry.
And last week Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote that she had sent President Donald Trump a list of ways he "can use his executive authority to tackle high food costs by focusing on corporate profiteering."
Egg prices have risen starting in 2022, coinciding with the arrival of bird flu in the United States, and are likely to keep rising in 2025.
The wholesale price of "Grade-A, Large, White, Shell Eggs" rose from $0.50-$1.30 per dozen in 2021 to $1.50-$5.00 per dozen in 2022, and then eased in 2023 before climbing up again in 2024. As of January 2025, the national index of weekly prices for that same type of eggs was up to $6.00-$8.00 per dozen, according to Farm Action.
"The previous all-time high [for wholesale prices] was late December 2022 heading into Christmas, when we touched $5.46 per dozen," Ryan Hojnowski, a market reporter at Expana, wrote in an e-mail to CNBC. "Of course we have blown way past that this time."
Retail prices have also increased. Retail prices for large, Grade-A eggs reached an average of $4.25 per dozen in December 2022 after never reaching above $3 a dozen in the 2010s. Retail prices declined in 2023 and then rose again throughout 2024, reaching $4.15 per dozen in December of last year.
Farm Action argues that while bird flu has been cited as the main driver for rising egg prices, its actual impact on production has been minimal. According to the letter, bird flu has forced the culling of roughly 115 million egg-laying chickens, but the impact of these losses on the total size of the U.S. supply of egg-laying flock has been "relatively modest." Huffman wrote that this culling has caused egg production to drop from 8.1 billion eggs per month in 2021 to 7.75 billion eggs per month at the end of 2024.
But crucially, according to the letter, per capita production of eggs has not been below per capita consumption of eggs in any year between 2022 and the present—while the total value of egg production has risen from $8.8 billion in 2021 to $17.9 billion in 2023.
Cal-Maine specifically has seen its profits soar. The company tallied gross profits of $179.6 million in fiscal year 2020, but the producer reported $1.2 billion and $541.6 million in gross profits in fiscal year 2023 and 2024, respectively, according to the letter. Between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2024, sale levels have remained fairly consistent, wrote Huffman.
"Evidence indicates that by not increasing their supply, the five dominant egg firms are forcing prices to stay high while reporting dramatic profit increases and level sales. These same firms are then using their increased profits to acquire their competition, further driving market consolidation instead of investing in replenishing or expanding their flocks," Farm Action wrote in a statement on Wednesday.
As evidence, they cite a number of mergers that took place in the industry in 2023, and point to the fact that the top five egg producers' share of the "U.S. layer hen flock" increased from 37% to 46% between 2023 and 2025.
"There appears to be a remarkable unwillingness among large egg producers to invest in the internal reconstruction or expansion of their egg-laying flocks in response to persistently high prices," wrote Huffman, which she contrasts with the quicker flock recovery that took place during the first bird flu outbreak in 2014-2015.
The "lagging recovery" and "the fact that egg producers are showing unusual discipline in their pricing and output decisions" indicates that market forces are not "operating as they should be." The letter suggests a few factors that may contribute to the lack of competition.
The group is urging the two agencies to launch investigations, specifically encouraging the FTC to launch an investigation into pricing and production practices of dominant egg producers and their hatchery suppliers to make sure the market is "truly free and fair."
This is far from the first time that the food and grocery industry has been accused of inappropriately raising prices.
In August 2024, a top executive at the supermarket chain Kroger even admitted under questioning from a Federal Trade Commission attorney that the grocery chain raised its egg and milk prices above the rate of inflation.
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Watchdog Says Trump-Backed AI Data Center Push 'Raises Massive Antitrust Concerns'
"Even if it turns out to be structured to avoid antitrust law enforcement, it plainly will concentrate power in a small number of corporate hands," said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman.
Jan 22, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday highlighted a new private-sector initiative to invest as much as $500 billion over four years into developing infrastructure to support artificial intelligence, starting with a raft of power-intensive data centers in Texas. The move drew swift criticism from one watchdog group on antitrust and environmental grounds.
The initiative, Stargate, is a joint venture of the tech firms OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. Trump hosted the leaders of those companies—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son—at the White House to announce the initiative just one day after he signed an executive order rolling back a Biden-era executive order implemented in 2023 that sought to put safeguards on AI.
"I think this will be the most important project of this era," said Altman, according to the Washington Post. "We wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President," he added, though both the Post and and the Associated Press noted that the creation of the partnership predated Trump's return to the White House.
Biden's 2023 executive order on AI placed safety obligations on AI developers and called on federal agencies to examine the technology's risks. But Biden, too, was interested in boosting AI infrastructure development. Right before he departed, in early mid-January, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to identify government sites that could be leased to private companies for the construction of AI data centers.
Environmental groups and tech advocacy groups have long advocated for greater safeguards on AI, pointing to the technology's potential impact on the climate emergency.
The average query in the AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT requires 10 times the amount of energy a Google search needs, and "in that difference lies a coming sea change in how the U.S., Europe, and the world at large will consume power—and how much that will cost," according to a 2024 analysis published by the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs analysts believe that AI will represent about 19% of data center power demand by 2028.
AI infrastructure is also water intensive. Global AI demand is projected to require more water extraction in a year than the country of Denmark by 2027, according to one study.
"The alarming surge in these centers' energy demand is on track to extend the fossil fuel era... [and] it is already increasing costs for some consumers and threatens to bring about a larger affordability crisis, while lining the pockets of Big Tech billionaires," said Karen Orenstein, a director at the environmental group Friends of the Earth, following Biden's January executive order. "For the sake of our planet and its people, we need to rein in Big Tech and regulate AI," she said.
Meanwhile, the joint venture to build out AI infrastructure has also drawn scrutiny from one watchdog group over concerns of corporate concentration.
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said Wednesday that "the new Stargate plan—at minimum—raises massive antitrust concerns. Even if it turns out to be structured to avoid antitrust law enforcement, it plainly will concentrate power in a small number of corporate hands."
"Absent a commitment to bring on new, renewable energy to power an even greater spike in AI power demand, the Stargate build out threatens to worsen the rush to climate catastrophe and to drive up consumer electric bills," he added.
Another observer, Jeffrey Westling of the American Action Forum, remarked on the timing of the announcement.
"Interesting to wait to announce this until the Trump Admin. Assuming its all private investment, maybe they were worried about FTC/DOJ antitrust scrutiny?" he wrote on X Tuesday.
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Trump’s Pick For AG Perfectly Exemplifies His MO—Cronyism and Corruption
Pam Bondi has a worrying history of receiving support from corporate actors before seemingly using her power to shield them from legal action.
Jan 16, 2025
In late November, President-elect Donald Trump announced Pam Bondi—former Florida attorney general, current partner at Ballard Partners, and long-time Trump-world regular—as his nominee for attorney general. Bondi perfectly exemplifies Trump’s approach to staffing the executive branch: prioritizing loyalists with a history of defending him personally and actively creating opportunities for revolver-induced corruption.
Going into the second Trump administration, the Department of Justice (DOJ) faces a broad array of issues, from counter-intelligence to civil rights enforcement. But in many respects the Justice Department is most central and critical as the enforcer of laws that limit corporate misbehavior. From monopolistic collusion and tax evasion to wage theft and polluting the air, the DOJ is constantly deciding whether to pursue potential civil and criminal actions against a wide array of corporations.
Is someone whose (virtual) rolodex is full of contacts at large tech companies likely to be enthusiastic about supporting antitrust enforcement against the very tech executives she has a warm working relationship with?
If confirmed, Bondi will be a classic corporate revolver. While at Ballard, she’s worked with a slate of corporate clients, prominently including Amazon, which has pending cases before the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission. As attorney general, Bondi would stand to oversee cases against a number of her former clients and their ilk, creating at the very least the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Bondi would also have the power to influence resource allocation decisions, determining how much effort the federal government puts toward enforcing the law against corporate actors and individuals alike. With many of Bondi and her Ballard peers’ clients and former clients number among those who stand to face federal enforcement, there are clear reasons to worry she might de-emphasize corporate misconduct and prioritize Trump’s political enemies.
Is someone whose (virtual) rolodex is full of contacts at large tech companies likely to be enthusiastic about supporting antitrust enforcement against the very tech executives she has a warm working relationship with? Questions like this seem to answer themselves, and the outlook isn’t good for those of us who see the role of government as protecting most of us from the greed and abuses of wealthy and powerful corporations and executives.
Beyond concerns about corporate revolver dynamics that could undercut DOJ’s efficacy in cracking down on corporate wrongdoing, Bondi herself has a worrying history of receiving support from corporate actors before seemingly using her power to shield them from legal action.
In 2011, newly inaugurated Florida Attorney General Bondi led the charge to fire two attorneys who had been investigating Lender Processing Services (LPS)—a mortgage services company that later pled guilty to having forged documents to illegally repossess borrowers’ homes—after Bondi received substantial campaign contributions from LPS. In 2013, Bondi directly solicited a reelection campaign donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Shortly after Bondi received the $25,000 donation, her office declined to continue investigating complaints against Trump University. Also during Bondi’s first term as Florida attorney general, she had an extended relationship with lawyers from firm Dickstein Shapiro who met with Bondi to represent an array of corporate clients. In several documented cases, Bondi declined to use her AG powers to pursue action against these companies, as The New York Times reported in a Pulitzer-winning 2014 series. (As the Miami Herald reports, a brochure from the firm even boasts that “we persuaded AGs not to sue Accretive Health.”)
These corruption concerns don’t even scratch the surface of Bondi’s broad network of financial and personal relationships with conservative interest groups and influential corporate actors, not to mention her lobbying work for the nation of Qatar. As such, Bondi's confirmation would likely become quite difficult, as every issue from how to deal with Foreign Agents Registration Act enforcement to antitrust policy is implicated by her time at Ballard.
These blatant concerns with Bondi’s fitness for the role were drawn out to some extent in her first confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Bondi repeatedly took a combative tone in response to questions. She dodged or evaded numerous questions about how her loyalty to Trump might influence her decision-making as attorney general, even making the blanket statement, “I’ll never speak on a hypothetical, especially one saying that the president would do something illegal”—a concerning hard line for her to take, given Trump's multiple, non-hypothetical, criminal convictions.
Bondi’s second hearing, scheduled for on Thursday, promises to produce more eventful and contentious testimony, as hearings for Trump nominees continue this week.
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