How dare customers want to have access to healthy AND cheap food. They don't get to chose both!

And what's with the wages "race to the bottom" ensuring everybody will only be able to get cheap food - if at all?

>France didn't want to import US Beef (fair), the US threatened to not import French cheese in retaliation (seemingly also rather fair).

Yes, fair as well. So?

(Although one is a crappy, unhealthy beef grown in abhorrent conditions, the other is high quality cheese).

This is absolutely price controls, complete with their inevitable result: The non-availability of the good.

Grocery and basic goods prices can vary significantly around the US. I live in a rural area where groceries are expensive as hell, in part because a european-owned supermarket chain has been buying up property that could be used for grocery stores, slapping deed restrictions on it that make it unusable for a grocery store, and then putting it back on the market.

Meanwhile I go on vacation to another rural area and groceries are cheap as hell...

No shit, it’s literally an import from Europe. It’s like comparing California wine prices in Las Vegas vs in Sydney.

> veg. I helped a friend do his grocery shopping in a trader joes

Trader Joe’s is not a grocery store for middle class people. It’s a high end convenience store. Unless you’re really well-off, you only buy a few select items from there occasionally.

If you want to see prices the working/middle class pays, look at the prices at Walmart.

Really makes you think about how Europe did for thousands of years before our great American saviors helped us. Local food wasn't expensive before globalisation, talk to your grandparents you'll see how different things were not so long ago.

> This is your customer leaving because they don't like your prices.

You do understand that when the market is not flooded with cheap subsidised alternatives that issue doesn't exist ? Fresh/local products were not a niche market a few decades ago, it was simply all that was available. You didn't have to buy cheap bananas from costa rica because you simply didn't have access to bananas, so you bought local apples &c. you couldn't buy cheap beef from the US because all the meat available was local and priced so that people could afford it.

> You don't get to force people to do business with you.

But apparently you get to say "Accept our subpar products or we will make you pay!", and I genuinely fail to see the difference in practice. If this isn't some form of abuse of authority I don't know what it is.

Being aware of products on sale for cheaper does not help if they're on another continent. (Given that the EU is basically an agricultural-subsidy league, it's not surprising to see produce for cheaper, either, though it depends on local wages as well.)

But the real thing which drives down the prices isn't just savvy, it's that these customers care about the price and are wiling to go to additional efforts to pay less, whether by shopping at a less-traditional or inconvenient place, or by using coupons. Meanwhile the rich-white-single-programmer happily cruises down to a nearby Whole Foods because he really doesn't care about an extra few dollars on his grocery bill; he even buys the pre-sliced fresh fruit as a convenience.

With regards to milk, note that you can find boxed milk in the US (UHT milk, or even milk powder)... it's just not as common, and culturally is regarded as an inferior good. As for eggs, you'll have to blame the USDA for the mandate that they are washed before shipment (as opposed to by the customer).

But we do! When I was a poor student, I usually bought the bottom-shelf store-brand cheap pasta. Today, I look at a higher shelf and often get the organic high-protein stuff with fancier shapes.

It costs about the same per unit weight to make, but the latter costs much more to purchase. This is exactly a sliding scale that allows people who are more price sensitive to buy practically the same stuff except at a much lower price.

(Why do companies do this? It lets them expand their target market without getting total profits too close to the floor.)

----

This is also why we have region locks on electronics and export controls on medicine: companies are selling literally the exact same stuff with different profit margins in different regions, based on their collective disposable income.

Can you expand on this?

Your bargaining power is that there are a dozen other food suppliers and tens of thousands of other common food items you could sell instead. No store is going to cry and go bankrupt because they can't sell Ding Dongs. Also, there are chains of hardware stores, chains of coffee shops, chains of everything which have additional bargaining power. And if the selling price is so high then everyone is going to be eager to push as much through the pipe as possible while the getting is good.

>the brands may also not be happy

Too bad. There is no shortage of food brands. This is not North Korea we're talking about.

>why aren't the existing german chains in austria undercutting others?

Probably because to do so would mean giving up all profit. That may in fact be illegal predatory pricing--using their position in the market to squeeze out less solvent competitors.

Wait, what? As a Canadian I can assure you this is not the case. It is so much different than what you are saying that our generally passive population has undertaken a month long boycott of our largest grocer to protest the outrageous pricing. When I see American prices on social media, I am shocked at how much cheaper prices are, even with currency conversion.

I’d love to know what you thought was cheaper.

>Meanwhile in Canada/USA, I'll take the 3-meat because it's the same price.

Be careful, even though they're the same "price", the net weights are different so they're not actually the same price.

Walmart bankrupted Vlassic by suckering them into a deal where they were stuck selling pickles at a loss. They are infamous for dictating price to their suppliers.

The market price wouldn't go up like that if you did that. Other people would import food into the region for a much smaller margin than that, and you'd be left with nothing but empty pockets and a lot of spoiled food.

If you stick to fresh produce and bulk dry goods, you're pretty much immune to those problems. Incidentally, those happen to be products that never get advertised for.

Respecting the agency of customers to make informed decisions for themselves. How terrible.

First time I heard that. The generally accepted explanation over here is that they couldn't match prices of established chains that had well optimized supply chains, and that they absolutely failed to account for cultural differences regarding how to deal with customers and employees.

Edit: https://youtube.com/watch?v=58_BZjnbMyw

When you ignore all the objectionable parts, it sure makes consumer protection look unreasonable, doesn't it?

Besides, the ultimate price consumers pay isn't any lower - it's just hidden, delayed, and probably higher.

Let me ask you - why shouldn't citizens be allowed to collectively bargain, expressing their terms in the form of legislation? If companies don't like the terms, they're free to sell their products elsewhere.

It's one thing to shop for a lower price, it's quite another to notice someone's desperate and take advantage.

> The collective population of the world does this when we chose to purchase things for cheaper prices made in countries with more lax environmental and labor laws.

An a lot of people object to that, too, and they often lack the power to make any other decision.

I would frame it as, "Americans are, on the whole, unwilling to pay higher prices for ethically-sourced food when lower prices can be had elsewhere." The solution is to eliminate the cheaper, unethical alternative.