Bernie Sanders said the deal was a corporate money grab and called on the White House to intervene on behalf of consumers. In a tweet last week, Vermont’s progressive Sen. tech giants and word of a potential Kroger-Albertsons fusion sparked critical commentary from both sides of the political spectrum. Mike Lee, together at lastĪmid a historically broad partisan divide that has brought meaningful, collaborative federal lawmaking to a functional standstill, there’s been one issue over the past several years with proven power to bring the red and blue teams together, at least in a philosophical sense: limiting corporate power.ĭemocrats and Republicans have found common ground in the effort to find ways to reign-in the market power of some U.S.
And, the outrage is uniting some partisan voices that typically find little else to agree on. While Kroger and Albertsons claim the merger will save them hundreds of millions of dollars and lead to better deals for shoppers, plenty of industry watchers and consumer advocates are crying foul and calling for intervention based on federal antitrust rules. That is convincing federal regulators that the deal, one in which Kroger is offering to buy out Albertsons for $20 billion and assume almost $5 billion in outstanding debt, doesn’t lead to further abuse of consumers who have been, and continue to be, battered by ongoing record high inflation. Two of the country’s largest grocery chains, Kroger and Albertsons, took care of the easy part of a possible merger last week: announcing a deal worth almost $25 billion that, should it come to fruition, would combine the two brands into a new, 5,000-store retail behemoth that would dwarf all competitors except the nation’s undisputed king of discount food and sundries, Walmart.
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