California attorney general says Amazon used ‘intimidation’ to get competitors like Walmart and Target to fix prices

When the cost of living is going up as much as it has been in the post-pandemic years, it can be hard for consumers to recognize when they're being ripped off (1).

Groceries, housing, health care, child care, gas, electricity, clothing — prices across the board have risen to eye-watering levels, to the point that many of us feel as if we've lost the concept of what the cost of any given item should be (2). Figures that may have once inspired sticker shock are begrudgingly accepted as a new normal.

But sometimes there are more forces at play, as in the case of price-fixing (3).

Price points for insulin (4), airline surcharges (5) and even bread have in the past been forcefully adjusted across the market, through sellers or organizations collaborating to increase profits or reduce competition without consumers being any the wiser.

And now, the California Attorney General's office is taking Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), the world's biggest company by revenue (6), to task for allegedly pushing select companies to alter their pricing on — or to remove products from — competitor websites.

Documents reveal “a clear and shocking picture of specific interactions in which Amazon, vendors, and competing retailers like Target, Walmart, Chewy, Best Buy, Home Depot, and others agree to increase retail prices,” the AG wrote.

Moneywise has reached out to the Attorney General's Office to provide further details about the claim, but has yet to receive a response at the time of writing.

While California AG Bob Bonta first announced the filing of an antitrust suit back in 2022 (7), he made key documents behind his case public on April 20, following "a robust discovery process where California uncovered evidence of countless interactions in which Amazon, vendors and Amazon's competitors agree to increase and fix the prices of products on other retail websites to bolster Amazon's profits."

"Amazon's 'cheap' prices are the result of intimidation and illegality," he wrote.

In the scathing release this week, Bonta said: "The evidence we've uncovered is clear as day: Amazon is working to make your life more unaffordable. The company is price fixing, colluding with vendors and other retailers to raise costs for Americans beyond what the market requires — beyond what is fair" (8).

The newly publicized and unredacted files contain many conversations between Amazon and its vendors and retailers. In one case, Home Depot management is said to have "agreed to raise the prices" on Agrothrive fertilizer after Amazon personnel contacted the manufacturer to complain that the garden product was listed for a lower price at Home Depot.

In another email, Amazon staff allegedly planned to "artificially" raise prices for a line of pet treats, with the vendor set to "get Chewy to follow" suit. In still another, following pressure, electronics brand Skullcandy apparently removed certain models of its earbuds from Walmart's website because they had been priced more cheaply there than on Amazon.

Additional emails between Amazon representatives and employees at brands like Hanes, Levi's and Armen Living show similar requests to price-match or delist items ranging from khaki pants to eye drops, which the motion describes as "strong-arming vendors into raising prices offered by competitors, often with the explicit or implicit agreement of the competing retailer."

Amazon appeared to ask its vendors to "fix," "correct," "work on" or "look into" competitors' prices, and would threaten to restrict advertising or promotions, discontinue orders, or delist stock from Amazon.

The motion also highlights what the Attorney General considers efforts to hide the scheme by allegedly encouraging employees to "obscure written evidence of price fixing," discuss issues over phone and video chat, and to be very careful — and vague — with the "legally approved talking points" used in vendor communications (9).

Read More: This $1B private real estate fund is now accessible to non-millionaires. Start investing with just $10

In a statement to Moneywise, an Amazon spokesperson called Monday's statement "a transparent attempt to distract from the weakness of [the] case," noting that the release comes more than three years after the initial complaint was filed, and is "based on supposedly 'new' evidence [the office] has had for years."

"Amazon is consistently identified as America's lowest-priced online retailer, and we're proud of the low prices customers find when shopping in our store. Amazon looks forward to responding in court at the appropriate time," the spokesperson's email continued.

According to a court reporter's transcript sent to Moneywise by Amazon, in a March 2 hearing in the San Francisco Superior Court, Judge Ethan Schulman voiced some "initial concerns" about the grounds of at least part of the Attorney General's Office's fight: its request for a preliminary injunction.

The request, filed in late February, asked that the courts "halt Amazon's illegal conduct while California's lawsuit proceeds." But Schulman questioned the timing of the move, given both when the alleged conduct took place and the proximity of the forthcoming trial, which is set to take place in January 2027 (10). (He refers to "the People," which means the case filed against Amazon by the AG).

"The events and conduct that the People contend constitute explicit price fixing… are all several years old. So… why am I hearing about this so late?" he asked. "Some of this was the subject of deposition discovery that took place in 2023. We're now in 2026. Why did the People take so long to move on this?"

The judge noted that preliminary injunctions are usually exercised at the beginning of litigation in order to "preserve the status quo until the merits can be decided at trial."

"Not clear to me what the status quo is here or what's going to be preserved," he said.

According to the court transcript, Amazon argued there's no basis for an injunction because it would order the company to stop colluding with direct competitors like Target or Walmart (called a "horizontal conspiracy") — something Amazon says it never did in the first place. The state has not "alleged that Amazon has sat down with Target or Walmart and fixed online prices," the company's lawyer said.

The evidence filed in support of the injunction says any type of price-fixing is illegal on its face, and, "Coercion of downstream distributors to fix wholesale prices is per se unlawful."

Another hearing regarding the preliminary injunction is scheduled for July 23.

Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise’s best stories and exclusive interviews first — clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now.

We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.

Common Sense Institute (1); The Walrus (2); Federal Trade Commission (3),(4); NBC News (5); Bloomberg (6); California Office of the Attorney General (7),(8),(9),(10)

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: California attorney general says Amazon used ‘intimidation’ to get competitors like Walmart and Target to fix prices

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.