WASHINGTON, D. C. - A group of Democratic U.S. Senators including Ohio’s Sherrod Brown want to crack down on “shrinkflation” by corporations that raise consumer costs by reducing the size of their products without also lowering prices.
Saying that the practice is particularly common among companies that sell consumer goods like household paper products, cleaning products, snacks, and candy, the Cleveland Democrat and his colleagues argue that it eats into the purchasing power of American families.
Last month, they introduced a bill called the “Shrinkflation Prevention Act” that would order the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish shrinkflation as an unfair or deceptive practice, and authorize FTC and state attorneys general to go after offending corporations.
“Americans are forced to pay for corporate stock buybacks and executive bonuses every time they go to the grocery store,” said a statement from Brown. “And corporations are always finding new ways to charge people more to increase their profits, like shrinking their product without shrinking their prices. Our bill will crack down on this greedy practice and make sure families get every ounce they pay for.”
Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, the bill’s chief sponsor, released a report last year that identified products that reduced their package sizes, but not prices.
For example, it said family sized packs of Double Stuf Oreos that were once 1 pound, 4 ounces now weigh in at 1 pound, 2.71 ounces. The “family size” box of Cocoa Puffs breakfast cereal went down from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces. Gatorade’s 32 oz bottle was replaced by a 28 oz bottle for the same price. Charmin Ultra Soft Mega rolls toilet paper decreased from 264 double-ply sheets a roll to 244 sheets, while Ultra Soft Super Mega rolls have decreased from 396 sheets to 366.
“Today, household paper products, like toilet paper and paper towels, are 34.9 percent more expensive per unit than they were in January 2019,” the report said. “Of that total cost increase, 10.3 percent is due to producers shrinking the size of rolls and packages. Similarly, snacks like Oreos and Doritos have become 26.4 percent more expensive since January 2019, and 9.8 percent of that price increase has been accomplished by giving families fewer chips and cookies for their dollar.”
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President Joe Biden called for the bill’s passage in his “State of the Union” speech this month, saying: “Snack companies think you won’t notice when they charge you just as much for the same size bag but with fewer chips in it. Pass Senator Bob Casey’s bill to put a stop to shrinkflation!”
Earlier this month, Brown posted a statement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, to agree with a post from the Sesame Street character Cookie Monster, who had bemoaned shrinkflation and the fact that “me cookies are getting smaller.”
“Me too, Cookie Monster,” Brown wrote. “Big corporations shrink the size of their products without shrinking their prices, all to pay for CEO bonuses. People in my state of Ohio are fed up — they should get all the cookie they pay for.”
The White House’s official account also weighed in with a statement to Cookie Monster: “C is for consumers getting ripped off. President Biden is calling on companies to put a stop to shrinkflation.”
While Democrats in the Senate and White House view “shrinkflation” as a big problem, a report last year from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says its overall impact on inflation has been minimal. Looking at prices from December 2014 to December 2019 with and without accounting for packaging changes. it found shrinkflation made less than one tenth of a percent of difference over four years.
Researchers did find a big difference when it came to items like baby food. Sticker prices were up 5.3% over five years, but when accounting for shrinkflation, prices were up 8.1%. Snack prices were up half-a-percent over those four years, but if economists didn’t account for shrinkflation, they would have been down 2.1%.
“While consumers may notice shrinkflation at the grocery store, it has a very small impact the overall inflation picture they face,” Bureau of Labor Statistics economist Kari McNair wrote.