STEVE FORBES: The left’s latest bad idea would punish bargain hunters

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Some bad ideas refuse to stay buried, no matter how often the facts prove them wrong. The efforts of the far-left in trying to revive the 1930s‑era Robinson‑Patman Act (RPA), and its companion antitrust theories, is one of them.

This misbegotten relic of the Great Depression placed restrictions on wholesalers from charging lower prices for retailers who bought in large volumes. Big chain stores like the now-defunct A&P were accused of undercutting mom-and-pop grocers by demanding lower wholesale prices. Populist politicians painted these chains as monopolists squeezing out the little guy. The inconvenient fact that these savings were passed on to consumers at lower retail prices was ignored.

Congress back then mistook efficiency for exploitation, treating competition as something sinister rather than a win for the consumer. Prices rose, consumers lost, and small stores didn’t miraculously return to profitability. Courts and federal agencies eventually narrowed the law’s reach, allowing market efficiency to prevail once again.

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Yet nearly 90 years after this ludicrous law was enacted, elements of the far-left are arguing that its concept of punishing pricing differences charged by wholesalers between large and small retailers should be resurrected. Their theory holds that “price discrimination” by big buyers makes markets unfair and harms Main Street. They cry that government oversight is necessary to restore their notions of balance.

Of course, the preposterous economics behind this thinking don’t add up. In “Stop Making Sense: Reviving the Robinson Patman Act and the Economics of Intermediate Price Discrimination,” Brent Skorup methodically dismantles the justifications for reviving the RPA. His core message: price differences aren’t proof of unfairness. They’re the mechanism that keeps competition alive and prices low.

Reviving this Depression-era theory today makes even less sense. Our economy runs on customization and dynamic pricing, from airline tickets to online retailers adjusting to market conditions by the minute. Skorup shows that intermediate price discrimination isn’t a bug of capitalism; it’s a feature of vibrant markets.

When buyers with different volumes or logistics costs get different price offers, that’s not injustice — it’s arithmetic. If Walmart innovates supply chain efficiencies or Amazon handles distribution more efficiently or Costco buys and sells in bigger lots, consumers win with lower shelf prices. Manufacturers willingly offer volume discounts because they sell more overall through those efficient, high-volume outlets. Penalizing that efficiency doesn’t protect competition; it punishes it. It’s like forcing every shopper to pay the same price for an airline seat or hotel room regardless of timing or demand — economically absurd in a world built on choice.

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Every customer of discounters like Walmart and Costco knows the virtue of purchasing items in bulk.

This push to resurrect the RPA and its companion antitrust litigation theories fits a broader ideological campaign from the left to use antitrust law as a social-engineering tool. A prime pusher of this type of power grabbing has been Lina Khan, who headed the FTC under Joe Biden; her fellow travelers include the likes of the current neo-communist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

For more than 40 years — under both parties and across the courts — the economic consensus held that antitrust should focus solely on consumer welfare. If prices fall and output rises, markets work. Today’s left wants to junk that principle for a pre-modern view more obsessed with shielding competitors rather than protecting competition.

In Skorup’s analysis, bureaucrats would gain huge discretion to deem pricing differences “reasonable” or not. That uncertainty chills investment, discourages innovation, and turns pricing into a political decision. Businesses would cater to activist regulators and trial lawyers instead of customers. That’s not fairness — it’s favoritism by red tape. It’s a form of tyranny that erodes our basic freedoms, which is just what the far-left lusts for.

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Free market advocates need to push back. The RPA is a fossil from a time when Washington believed it could dictate the right price for everything. Four decades of evidence confirms that competition — not regulation — drives efficiency and choice. When government kills price discrimination, it kills the competition that shields consumers from gouging.

Even without federal action, state RPA copycats and courtroom trial lawyers are testing these theories that threaten to distort markets nationwide through regulatory uncertainty and litigation.

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Policymakers who read the Skorup report will see that the supposed harms of price discrimination are mostly theoretical, while the benefits — lower prices, greater choice, stronger competition — are real. Healthy markets need freedom to set prices, reward innovation, and reflect true costs. Reviving the Robinson‑Patman Act would drag us back to a command-and-control model of retailing that failed once and would fail again.

The marketplace doesn’t need a New Deal‑era referee blowing the whistle on deals that save consumers money. It needs leaders who understand that “fairness” means open competition and voluntary exchange. Since the 1930s, real-world experience has consigned the idea behind the RPA into the junkyard of history. Keep it there!

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