The predatory pricing pattern the FTC would in theory sure over would be: selling items at an artificially low price until the competition goes out of business, then raising prices once you are the only seller left standing. It's the second step that makes it anticompetitive instead of just competitive

Standard grocery margins are usually lower, in the 30%-40% range, and are often much lower for promotional items. Rotating "loss leaders" to get people in the door are standard practice. IMHO that would make it hard to bring an antitrust action against a grocery chain, as pretty much every store engages in a limited amount of predatory pricing as a marketing technique.

50% is the standard retail markup, but it varies by industry.

I don't think Amazon was producing anything they sold in their grocery stores. They were probably buying the same white label items as everyone else for their store brand.

What was rolled back? There was no major change in action whatsoever, only rhetoric, which is meaningless. As for funding, Trump raised substantially less in 2024 than 2020 while Harris raised more money than any campaign ever has, by a wide margin. [1] Dark money also overwhelmingly flowed to the DNC. [2] And a large chunk of all of Trump's funding came after the previous administration tried to imprison him, which rather freaked people out - even those not particularly fond of him. That also likely played a significant role in the more DGAF presidency we're seeing today relative to 2016.

[1] - https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_campaign_finan...

[2] - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/dark...

But it should only be because they indeed have lower margins or more efficient operations. It should not be funded by external money (other departments or investors), only to undercut competition too force them out only to raise prices to above the previous point after.

So a simple law could be that prices can only be raised to the point where they were at before the competition was squashed.

You can do this to a low margin business. In fact you can increase the margin once the dust settles.