Is the Trump administration helping to fuel America’s affordability crisis?

This is an adapted excerpt from the Dec. 20 episode of “Velshi.”

When politicians talk about affordability, it can sometimes feel like they’re describing something vague and amorphous. They promise to “address affordability” without really coming up with concrete solutions, leaving you with the impression that the crisis you’re feeling is driven by some mysterious economic force beyond anyone’s control.

In Donald Trump’s case, it’s a little different: He wants you to believe you’re simply imagining higher prices. The president’s real concern seems to be that you will start connecting the dots and realize not only that the affordability crisis is a very real thing, but it is by design.

The unsealed complaint alleges that Pepsi colluded with Walmart to force competing retailers to charge higher prices to consumers. 

But two recent stories that largely flew under the radar — mostly because the Trump administration wanted them to — make that connection clear.

The first story centers on an alleged price-fixing scheme involving PepsiCo and Walmart. Newly unsealed court documents reveal that Trump’s Federal Trade Commission may have quietly buried a case alleging that Pepsi and Walmart colluded to rig grocery prices, artificially inflating costs for the superstore’s competitors while ensuring its dominance in the grocery field.

According to the FTC complaint, Pepsi actively policed and punished grocery chains that tried to compete with Walmart on its products. 

This matters because Pepsi is a giant. It took in $92 billion last year, selling not just soft drinks, but also iconic food brands like Lays, Doritos, Quaker and more.

Walmart is far and away one of Pepsi’s biggest customers, according to market analysts. Pepsi has an interest in keeping Walmart happy because, as retail market data firm Numerator found, Walmart controls more than 20% of the U.S. grocery market and ranks among the top three grocers in almost every major population center.

According to the complaint, their relationship allegedly cuts both ways: Pepsi helps Walmart dominate, and in return, Walmart helps Pepsi maintain its grip on the grocery market.

The unsealed complaint alleges that Pepsi colluded with Walmart to force competing retailers to charge higher prices to consumers. 

Grocery prices in general have risen more than 35% since 2019, but Pepsi’s have far outpaced that. Its soft drink prices alone have soared 67% higher in the same time period, according to retail grocery analyst Errol Schweizer.

During the post-pandemic “greedflation” wave of 2022, Pepsi’s chief financial officer even said on an investor call, “I still think we’re capable of taking whatever pricing we need.” The company then raised prices by double digits for seven straight quarters.

Before she stepped down in January, one of the last cases then-FTC Chair Lina Khan tackled was the antitrust action against Pepsi for alleged violations of the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, a federal antitrust law designed to protect small businesses from price discrimination by suppliers.  

The FTC argued that the law prohibits suppliers from giving large buyers unfair price breaks or promotional advantages over smaller, competing retailers. In that way, it ensures all competing resellers get proportionately equal terms for the same commodities. Notably, the law has been largely ignored and unenforced by antitrust agencies since the 1980s.

In this case, as is customary in antitrust procedures, the FTC’s complaint was initially redacted. But Andrew Ferguson, whom Trump appointed to replace Khan as FTC chair, dropped the case in May. As a result, the documents central to the case remained hidden from public view.

But it wasn’t over.

A few months later, a nonprofit called Institute for Local Self-Reliance petitioned the court to unseal those documents and won. 

Pepsi, unsurprisingly, fought the petition, arguing, “the misleading narrative in the documents will damage Pepsi’s reputation.” The judge disagreed, finding that “negative publicity” was not a sufficient reason for keeping the complaint sealed. 

The complaint was finally made public on Dec. 11. As antitrust analyst Matt Stoller put it, “A Trump official tasked with dealing with affordability tried to hide this complaint and failed, and now there’s a political and legal storm as a result.”

What the unsealed complaint revealed was damning: Khan’s team had done its homework. It had gathered and assembled internal Pepsi documents and emails allegedly showing that Pepsi enforced a price gap between Walmart and its competitors — a gap that favored Walmart. 

According to the complaint, Pepsi actively monitored the prices of its products at rival stores, prepared reports for Walmart showing its pricing advantage and raised wholesale prices on other retailers, forcing them to charge their customers more than the superstore charged.

When Walmart was asked for a response, a spokesperson said, “It’s worth noting that the FTC voluntarily dismissed this one. We remain committed to negotiating on behalf of our customers, so we can deliver value and everyday low prices.”

A Pepsi spokesperson also responded, saying, “This case was voluntarily dismissed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and the unsealing does not change the outcome. The complaint includes inaccuracies and unsubstantiated allegations, including mischaracterizations of our business dealings with customers.”

Either way, Walmart controls more than a fifth of the grocery market, a huge share. But other retailers didn’t get Walmart’s allegedly sweet deal with Pepsi, and the result was higher prices for millions of consumers shopping for Pepsi products everywhere else.  

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Stoller explained the illusion this creates for the consumer: “To the end consumer … Walmart appears to be a low-cost retailer, but that’s because it induces its suppliers to push prices up at rivals. The net effect is less competition at every level … which increases food inflation.”

If concealing an alleged price-fixing scheme wasn’t audacious enough, Ferguson and other Republicans then launched a smear campaign against Khan. Trump’s new FTC head dismissed the investigation as a “nakedly political effort.”

The fallout since the unsealing has been swift. A new class action lawsuit was filed against Walmart and Pepsi. Both companies have defended their pricing practices.  

Now, if you think that was bad, our second overlooked story shows the problem goes beyond groceries. 

Just before Thanksgiving, during the classic holiday news dump, Trump’s Justice Department announced a settlement with RealPage, the property-management software company accused of helping corporate landlords coordinate rent hikes through its algorithm.

On paper, the announcement was framed as a win for renters. But RealPage has been under fire in multiple states, accused of enabling landlords to behave like a cartel by sharing data and effectively colluding to raise rents. These allegations were first highlighted by an investigative reporting team working with ProPublica.

Last year, under former President Joe Biden, the Justice Department sued RealPage, charging the company with violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and alleging that its software facilitated price-fixing among corporate landlords. RealPage denied the charges.

According to an FTC explanation of algorithmic price fixing, this kind of data-driven method would likely have been “unimaginable to the robber barons” of yesteryear, whose conduct inspired modern-day antitrust legislation.

These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re examples of how unchecked market power is driving prices up.

In the past, collusion might have involved “a formal handshake in a clandestine meeting,” but “algorithms are the new frontier. And, given the amount of information an algorithm can access and digest, this new frontier poses an even greater anti-competitive threat than the last.”

Last month, Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater announced that her Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice had settled the lawsuit with RealPage, calling it a victory for consumers. 

That all sounds great until you hear what RealPage’s lawyers said. In a statement, the company thanked the Antitrust Division and asserted that “the agreement includes no financial penalties, damages, or findings or admissions of wrongdoing.”

As Stoller notes, there’s a reason RealPage is so thrilled with the settlement it got from the government. “The settlement is a set of ‘complex behavioral remedies’ that have such a poor track record of being enforced. And they feel full of loopholes,” Stoller wrote. “If I were a defense lawyer trying to insert loopholes into a settlement, this kind of document is what I’d propose.”

While more middle-class Americans live paycheck to paycheck, Trump’s antitrust enforcers, Ferguson and Slater, have been quietly making moves that let powerful corporations drive up costs for millions of Americans.

These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re merely examples of how unchecked market power is driving prices up, as this administration deliberately undermines transparency, enforcement and democratic oversight. 

In a healthy democracy, antitrust enforcers are supposed to protect consumers like you. Under the Trump administration, it sure looks like they’re working against you.

That this is all happening while millions struggle to pay for rent, groceries and health insurance is shameful. That Trump openly mocks the affordability crisis even as his antitrust people help to fuel it is diabolical.

Amel Ahmed and Allison Detzel contributed.