Checkout Error: A Bad Grocery Plan Meets a Weak Antitrust Case
I’ve criticized plenty of private antitrust cases. This may be the first in which the plaintiffs sued to stop a genuinely bad idea—and I still think they should lose. That is the odd posture of the antitrust challenge to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan for subsidized grocery stores in New York City.
On Sept. 9, the National Supermarket Association and two New York supermarkets filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They allege that New York City and the New York City Economic Development Corp. are attempting to monopolize “retail sales of weekly-stock-up groceries at full-service stores” in certain New York City markets through the Mamdani plan for discounted city-run grocery stores (here, here, and here).
The gravamen of the complaint is that the planned discounts would amount to predatory pricing. That’s a tough row to hoe for several reasons, but the demanding predatory-pricing standard is hardly the plaintiffs’ only obstacle. The case raises some interesting issues, but I think it’s a loser. I’ll get to that.