The senator from Massachusetts is concerned, as she so often is, about a voluntary market transaction that she has nothing to do with. Witness government at its most punctilious:
Hellmann's mayo
McCormick spices
Cholula hot sauce
Frank's RedHotWhat do these products have in common? One company could soon control them all.
I have concerns that McCormick and Unilever's $45 billion merger could increase YOUR grocery prices.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 13, 2026
George W. Bush once said that “when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” Elizabeth Warren’s bar for action seems to be mild irritation.
It may distress Warren that two of the hundreds of hot sauce brands available in the United States may be under the same roof, but that’s already the case: The spice giant McCormick already owns both Frank’s RedHot and Cholula Hot Sauce. So her real hang-up is that the maker of spices and two hot sauces may also soon produce (checks notes) a mayonnaise? Because hot sauce and mayo are interchangeable condiments, of course.
Warren fears that this “consolidation,” through some undescribed but nefarious mechanism, will increase grocery prices. This from the former presidential candidate who, in 2020, advocated the appointment of “Federal Reserve officials who believe in the agency’s full employment mandate, recognize that inflation fears have been overblown for years, and who are willing to let wages grow.” Meaning, those who pursued a fast-expanding money supply.
She got her wish later that year. So how did Warren’s preferred monetary policy work out for grocery shoppers?
I’m sorry, it must have been the “corporate greed” that spiked for a few years before receding. But if food companies can already hike prices at will, what good is a merger supposed to do them? It can’t just be greater economies of scale — it has to be something more nefarious.