Washington, D.C. — The Federal Trade Commission today announced a settlement with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, the nation’s largest wine and spirits distributor, resolving the agency’s landmark price discrimination lawsuit without a trial or judgment about the facts. The company was accused of charging mom-and-pop shops 12% to 67% more than big chains for identical bottles. In response, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement:

“While Trump’s antitrust enforcers parade faux-populist soundbytes, this settlement shows their loyalties lie with corporate power,” said Lee Hepner Senior Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “This was the most significant effort in decades to revive the law against illegal price discrimination, and the FTC settled it without a trial. Between this settlement and last year’s dismissal of the PepsiCo case, the agency has now closed out its only two price discrimination cases and brought zero new ones. Commissioner Meador has talked extensively about the need to revive RPA enforcement only to bury the RPA under a press release.”

“The settlement places few burdens on Southern Glazer’s beyond what the law already requires and will allow them to challenge and litigate every decision by the monitor. There are no fines or penalties and nothing to provide deterrence,” Hepner continued. 

The FTC sued Southern Glazer’s in December 2024, alleging the company — which distributes brands like Grey Goose, Bacardi, and Jim Beam — violated the Robinson-Patman Act since at least 2018 by giving steep discounts and rebates to large chains like Total Wine, Costco, and Kroger while denying comparable pricing to independent liquor stores, neighborhood grocers, and convenience stores – even when the stores sat blocks apart. The FTC documented Southern employees explicitly discussing restricting discounts to big national chains to keep the pricing from being absorbed by “the rest of the market.” The complaint, filed under FTC Chair Lina Khan, survived a motion to dismiss. The case was the federal government’s first Robinson-Patman Act enforcement action in a generation – and because it settled, the next enforcer will start from the same dormant case law this one inherited.

The settlement fits a pattern across the administration’s antitrust agencies: a preference for deals over verdicts. The FTC previously settled with US Anesthesia Partners over its private equity roll-up charges, and its settlements with Express Scripts and other PBMs left notable gaps. The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has done the same with Live Nation-Ticketmaster, Agri Stats, RealPage, and an egg producer cartel — and its third-ranking official has reportedly instructed staff to avoid antitrust trials altogether.

Learn more about the Robinson-Patman Act with our fact sheet.

Read our full 2022 report on the Robinson-Patman Act here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here