WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are pushing the Donald Trump administration to lower food prices through tougher antitrust enforcement and a clampdown on so-called surveillance pricing by retailers.

Democrats led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) are asking the Federal Trade Commission to restart an investigation begun during the Joe Biden administration into companies showing online customers different prices based on data such as their internet browsing history.

The Trump administration fired Biden FTC Chair Lina Khan last year and shut down an investigation into both brick-and-mortar and online retailers setting prices based on personal data from middlemen peddling algorithms and artificial intelligence tools.

“The FTC should reopen its investigation into surveillance pricing and pursue rulemaking and enforcement actions to address exploitative surveillance and dynamic pricing practices,” the Democrats said in a letter to the FTC and the Justice Department, in which they urged the agencies to block food industry mergers and consider breaking up big companies.

Spokespeople for the departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The FTC under Khan examined the nascent surveillance pricing industry in a study last year and sought input from the public as part of a regulatory process that could have resulted in new rules for the industry.

“Instead of a price being a static feature of a good, the same good may have different prices in different places or for different people or audience segments based on data gathered and used from various sources,” the FTC said in its study.

Progressive Democrats have proposed banning the practice through legislation, though it stands little chance of becoming law.

“All of the big stores are looking into using private information about what we’re scrolling, what we’re looking at, what apps do we have, how far we live, what job we have, what color skin, you know — just all these little, like, private profile data to calculate pricing,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) told HuffPost earlier this year.

The Warren-Schumer letter, which was also signed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), highlighted surveillance pricing alongside the Trump administration’s broader failure to quell inflation.

“Despite President Trump’s promises to bring down prices ‘on day one,’ Americans saw their grocery bills rise faster than overall inflation last year, and prices are still expected to rise another three percent this year,” the Democrats wrote.

Trump’s war in Iran has spiked gas prices and caused overall inflation to surge to 3.3% in March, the highest it’s been since Trump returned to the White House. Affordability concerns have helped propel Democrats to a string of special election victories since last year and are widely expected to hurt Republicans in the midterm elections this November.

Food prices were up 2.7% in March over the past year — higher than the 2% target policymakers consider ideal — but declined slightly relative to the prior month, according to government data released Friday.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett touted lower prices for beef and eggs, which he said resulted from the administration’s decision to encourage the importation of beef from Argentina and from its efforts to control avian flu.

“We controlled the avian flu so much that there are hens all over the place, laying eggs at a record rate with egg prices about the lowest they’ve ever been,” Hassett said last week on CNBC.

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