Biden-era Pepsi price discrimination lawsuit dropped by FTC

The Federal Trade Commission voted to dismiss a lawsuit filed in the last days of the Biden administration that accused PepsiCo of offering sweetheart pricing to big retailers.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson dissented to the suit when it was filed in January, when he was one of the regulator’s commissioners. Now the agency’s leader, Ferguson on Thursday again criticized the case as “a nakedly political effort to commit this administration to pursuing little more than a hunch that Pepsi had violated the law.”

“The FTC’s outstanding staff will instead get back to work protecting consumers and ensuring a fair and competitive business environment,” he said in a statement.

The FTC voted 3-0 to drop the suit. The panel is supposed to be made up of five commissioners, no more than three of whom can share the same political party. But it is currently led by three Republicans after President Donald Trump fired its two Democratic commissioners in March. The two ousted officials have slammed their removals as illegal and are urging a judge to reinstate them.

A Pepsi spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company criticized the FTC lawsuit in January, saying at the time that its pricing practices “are in line with industry norms and we do not favor certain customers by offering discounts or promotional support to some customers and not others.”

Top-ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill sent a letter to Pepsi over the weekend demanding more information about its pricing strategy. They sought to revive a Biden-era focus on price-gouging as a driver of inflation, an argument that has taken a back seat to the Trump administration’s attention on purportedly unfair trade arrangements.

But major corporations continue to draw scrutiny from the White House over pricing in other ways. Last weekend, Trump slammed Walmart for warning that it was likely to raise prices to offset the costs of his import taxes, demanding on social media that it “EAT THE TARIFFS.”

In the days since then, other major consumer brands have appeared to tread cautiously around pricing. Target said Wednesday that charging customers more would be its “very last resort.” Home Depot virtually ruled out price hikes this week, and Lowe’s barely mentioned tariff impacts in its Wednesday earnings call at all.