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The
lawsuit, filed in January, alleged that PepsiCo was giving
unfair price advantages to Walmart at the expense of other
vendors and consumers. The lawsuit had relied on the rarely
enforced 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, which it said prohibits
companies from using promotional incentive payments to favor
large customers over smaller ones.
When the lawsuit was filed, Democrat Lina Khan was the FTC’s
chairwoman, and she was joined in support of the lawsuit by
Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. At
the time, Republican Commissioners Andrew Ferguson and Melissa
Holyoak dissented.
A few days after the lawsuit was filed, President Donald Trump
took office and Khan resigned. Trump fired Bedoya and Slaughter
in March. Bedoya and Slaughter have sued the Trump
administration, saying their removal was illegal.
Ferguson, who is now the chairman of the FTC, said Thursday that
the PepsiCo lawsuit was a “dubious partisan stunt” and FTC staff
had more important work to do.
“The Biden-Harris FTC rushed to authorize this case just three
days before President Trump’s inauguration in a nakedly
political effort to commit this administration to pursuing
little more than a hunch that Pepsi had violated the law,”
Ferguson said in a statement.
Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo said Thursday that it was
pleased with the FTC's withdrawal of the lawsuit.
“PepsiCo has always and will continue to provide all customers
with fair, competitive, and non-discriminatory pricing,
discounts and promotional value,” the company said in a
statement.
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