FTC lawsuit over Kroger-Albertsons merger is a political tightrope for Harris and Trump

The Washington Examiner cited CEI’s expert on antitrust matters

Alex Reinauer is a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in antitrust matters. He said one reason the FTC might be interested in this merger is that it is an election year, underscoring just how much this ties into the current political scene.

Reinauer pointed out that the Harris campaign is treading a political tightrope on the FTC more generally. LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, a major Democratic donor, has urged Harris to replace Khan as the head of the FTC if she is elected in November.

“I would hope that Vice President Harris would replace her,” Hoffman told CNN. “Antitrust is fine. … Waging war is not.”

Reinauer told the Washington Examiner that, with the matter of the FTC, Harris may be trying to strike a balance between focusing on grocery prices and her proposal to combat perceptions of food price gouging with internal donor pushback from people such as Hoffman against Khan’s FTC.

Read more at Washington Examiner