'It's a gut punch': Critics warn Trump's DOJ settlement greenlights more food price hikes

US President Donald Trump’s Justice Department moved Thursday to settle a Biden-era antitrust lawsuit against the analytics firm Agri Stats, proposing an agreement that critics say would effectively give the stamp of federal approval to meat industry price-fixing schemes.

The Justice Department—now headed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal lawyer—hailed the proposed settlement as a “historic” win over a company whose “business model directly raised the price of chicken, turkey, and pork in local grocery stores across our nation.” But critics said the agreement, which must undergo review by a federal judge, would do nothing substantial to rein in price-fixing in the meat industry.

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, said the deal “stinks of rotting meat,” noting that the settlement was proposed just days before the case was set to go to trial.

“No way does it address the harms,” Hepner said of the 79-page settlement. “Agri Stats spent decades hiking prices on over 90% of processed meat in the country. Now they’re being told to exercise some discretion going forward.”

“It’s a gut punch to those who worked on this case for four years thinking it might actually deter these price fixing services from cropping up in every other industry,” Hepner added.

The Biden administration brought the antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats in September 2023, accusing the company and its subsidiary EMI of “collecting, integrating, and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost, and output among competing meat processors.”

“While distributing troves of competitively sensitive information among participating processors, Agri Stats withholds its reports from meat purchasers, workers and American consumers, resulting in an information asymmetry that further exacerbates the competitive harm of Agri Stats’ information exchanges,” the Biden DOJ said.

“This settlement legalizes meat price-fixing—it just says you have to bring the giant retailers and distributors in on the game.”

The Trump Justice Department’s settlement would require Agri Stats to “make the vast majority of information” it distributes “available to all interested domestic purchasers on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms,” along with several other conditions.

But the settlement states that EMI is not otherwise “prohibited... from continuing to provide EMI Price Reports in substantially the same manner as it did as of April 24, 2026.”

Agri Stats noted in a statement Thursday that it “denied all allegations” of illegal conduct and “has admitted no wrongdoing” as part of the settlement. Agri Stats’ lead counsel in the case called the deal “a win” for both the company and consumers—a claim that antitrust advocates rejected, calling the agreement blatantly one-sided in the corporation’s favor.

“This settlement legalizes meat price-fixing—it just says you have to bring the giant retailers and distributors in on the game,” wrote Basel Musharbash, managing attorney at Antimonopoly Counsel. “Get ready for even higher prices for chicken, turkey, and pork.”

The proposed Agri Stats settlement is the latest favorable deal that Trump’s Justice Department—which is in the grip of lobbyists with ties to the president—has cut with a major corporation accused of illegal price-fixing.

Last November, as Common Dreams reported, the Justice Department agreed to settle a Biden-era lawsuit filed against the real estate software company RealPage, which was accused of an “unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing and to monopolize the market for commercial revenue management software.”

RealPage welcomed the settlement, noting that the agreement included “no financial penalties, damages, or findings or admissions of wrongdoing.”