Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Landmark Legislation That Will Break Up The Meatpacking Monopoly And Drive Down Costs For American Families

Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to announce the Family Grocery and Farmer Relief Act, landmark legislation that is a part of Senate Democrats' efforts to tackle Trump's affordability crisis. This legislation will break up dominant meatpackers, rein in foreign-controlled corporate giants, and use federal tools to stop unfair pricing that drives up grocery bills. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be found here:

I just came back from an event at the National Press Club, hosted by the American Economic Liberties Project, on the plague of high food costs that are maddening to so many Americans. People are fed up. Donald Trump promised to bring food costs down, and instead they've gone up. Last month, the Secretary of Agriculture said "It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing." This is nonsense. So this morning, as part of Democrats' Lower Costs Agenda, I was proud to join with my colleagues to introduce the Family Grocery and Farmer Relief Act.

There are many reasons why food costs have risen-including Trump's tariffs, including supply chain problems. But there is a deeper, structural problem under the surface too: monopoly power. A handful of powerful corporations have turned food and farming into a rigged game. Today only four companies control 85% of the market for beef, 67% of the market for pork, and 60% of the market for poultry. When so much market power is concentrated within so few corporations, Americans at the grocery store see prices go up, while farmers see their profits go down, and corporate players have free reign to rig the system.

Today, a pound of ground beef is more expensive than ever, at seven dollars a pound. The price of beef in general has risen 16% in just a year, to six dollars a pound. This is not sustainable. So my bill rests on a simple idea: to lower costs, we need more competition, and to create more competition, we have to break the stranglehold of these monopolistic corporations. We've done it before, and we can do it again. Fighting monopoly power is a tried-and-true tradition in the American ethos of progress.

Over 120 years ago, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, and it opened the eyes of the nation to working conditions in meatpacking pants, and to the awful monopoly powers that dominated that industry. Soon after, the FTC was created to investigate monopolies and anticompetitive behavior that raised prices and made it harder for small and medium businesses to compete and thrive. And few years later, Congress responded to these findings by passing The Packers and Stockyards Act, which curbed the power of the meatpacking giants and gave the federal government tools to restore competition and protect producers.

Well, history is repeating itself. Those monopolies are dominating the food industry, particularly the meat industry, as they did 120 years ago. And we should follow the path that occurred back then when we curbed the power of monopolies. We must do the same today in our day and age and history gives us a good example. Americans love the free market and open competition-but they don't love it when just one or two companies can dominate an industry and make fair competition impossible. That's not American, that's not a free market. That is how costs go up for something as basic as a pound of ground beef. Our bill will break the monopoly power that has played a sinister role in raising prices of beef and groceries, and I thank my colleagues who have joined this legislation.

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