America’s 250th: From Morton Salt to empty stores—Is Robinson-Patman the ghost in many downtowns?

You can see it in the empty storefronts of many small-town down towns as you walk by; it is the telltale sign of customers defecting from local merchants to the cheaper wares of big chain brands. Branson’s historic district is a wonderful exception, but in many other small towns the trend is plain to see.

In some ways, it is a modern ailment, but historically, one familiar to Americans who knew economic fear during the Great Depression. That is why, on June 19, 1936, FDR signed the Robinson-Patman Act. An addendum to the Clayton Antitrust Act, commonly known as the Anti-Price Discrimination Act, it had a simple purpose: to prevent communities from being deprived of their local stores.

The law was put in place to make it against the rules for a supplier to give a large corporate chain preferential treatment with steep discounts, while the little guy had to pay through the nose for the very same product. Congress saw no reason to let a giant company with the means to buy in bulk have an unfair stranglehold on the market.

For decades, the antitrust law did its job of shielding small businesses, with the Federal Trade Commission at the helm of enforcement. There was the matter of Morton Salt in 1948, for instance. In what became a landmark case, the FTC took on Morton Salt over price differences between what it charged larger chain businesses and what it charged smaller businesses. A question that appeared unassailable on the surface. The Supreme Court saw that only five or so national grocery chains were buying enough salt to secure the bottom-line price and ruled it illegal price discrimination. It was a major win that put a stop to such volume-based ruses.

Yet, for business under the Act, all has not been all rosy. By the 1980s, federal authorities were much less inclined to enforce it. Some officials came to the view that if the big retail chains could get a better deal, the everyday consumer might be the one to reap the savings. Others said the rules were too convoluted for the public to make head or tail of. With that change of heart, the government largely stood down, leaving any action to be taken up in costly private civil suits.

You can see the toll that the neglect of this law has taken on American communities across the country. With the government no longer policing pricing rules, big retail chains have put down roots and expanded, while small neighborhood retailers have been put out of business.

For years, the feds turned a blind eye to the statute, leaving it to private citizens to make their case in court. Take the 1976 Texaco Retailers lawsuit: independent gas station owners went after Texaco for selling to wholesalers at cut-rate prices so they could then compete with them on an uneven playing field, and they won. Or consider the 1990s, when the American Booksellers Association took on the big publishers and store chains over unfair price advantages. Such cases made it plain that the 1936 law was still very much needed.

Since the early 2020s, however, the nation has seen a revival of the Robinson-Patman Act. Government officials came to the conclusion that they had to rein in the unbridled power of big-box stores. Federal regulators made it clear in 2022 that they would prioritize fairness over efficiency, marking a clear move back to antitrust enforcement. By April 2024, a dozen or so members of Congress demanded that the Act be used to lower prices and level the playing field.

That kind of politics soon translated into the courtroom. In December 2024, the government brought suit against Southern Glazer’s, a top liquor distributor, for making small stores pay more than the large chains did. Then again in January 2025 against PepsiCo over what was said to be rigging of the soft drink market. It was all set to be a landmark moment for antitrust law but in a surprise move, government officials voted to drop case in May 2025.

In this day and age, is it worth trying to enforce the Act? Maybe not! A report by the Antitrust Modernization Commission states that the Act leads to higher overall prices and discourages discounts. It said the Act has had the “unintended effect of limiting the extent of discounting generally and therefore has likely caused consumers to pay higher prices than they otherwise would.”