Arizona opinion: When grocery giants play by their own rules, communities pay the price

Through my work as the chair of Fundación Honoris Causa, an organization dedicated to achieving economic opportunity and food security for Latinos, I know one thing to be true: Arizona families are being stretched thinner than ever to put food on the table. Grocery costs here have soared 8.4 percent in the last year, pushing the average household’s weekly grocery bill to over $272 — among the highest in the nation. For the families I work with, rising costs represent impossible choices between basic necessities like medication and meals. Interestingly, while Arizonans are making sacrifices to feed their families, big box retailers and other grocers continue posting profits quarter after quarter.

The question everyone should be asking is: how did we get to a situation where families are being squeezed and the stores they buy food from are making money hand over fist?

We can start by looking at how large grocers behaved at the height of COVID. While families lost jobs and scrambled to cover rent and groceries, large grocers raised prices and posted record-breaking profits. They blamed supply chain disruptions for the price hikes, but prices never came down once those disruptions subsided. An FTC report later confirmed what many of us suspected all along: The retailers exploited the COVID crisis to line their pockets at the expense of the communities they serve.

Now, with tariffs causing more economic uncertainty, many families worry that we’re going to see price manipulation happen again. These families are right to be concerned. Target and Walmart employees have already shared pictures of price hikes going into effect, long before tariffs could possibly affect their costs. It’s clear that the retailers are treating Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff policy as another opportunity to squeeze even more out of consumers.

Thanks to a confluence of events, our most vulnerable Arizonans are especially at risk. Nearly 900,000 people in our state rely on SNAP benefits to put food on the table, but those benefits are likely to shrink as federal funding is cut. If retailers pad their profits through unfair food pricing, they’re taking from households already being asked to do more with less.

Unfortunately, big retailers’ pattern of profiting at the expense of our communities does not stop at the checkout line.

This year, the retailers gave us yet another reason to question their commitments to Arizona. When standing by diversity initiatives became politically inconvenient for Target and Walmart, they caved to the Trump Administration’s demands. The retailers shut down supplier diversity programs that helped Latino small business owners succeed. Walmart stopped funding the nonprofit it started to advance racial justice. The retailers’ betrayal should call into question everything they say when they ask us to trust them on pricing.

Even more concerning, the retailers are thinking up new ways to profit from consumers. In 2025, they are investing in new tech like digital shelf pricing that makes it easier to raise prices without anyone noticing. These electronic price tags allow stores to change the cost of goods instantly, giving them unprecedented power to manipulate prices while making it nearly impossible for consumers to track when or why prices change.

In 2025, it is time for the big retailers and grocers to stop getting a free pass. Arizona lawmakers should step up to protect our families. The good news is that some are doing just that.

At the federal level, Senator Gallego led a letter calling on the FTC to make sure grocers don’t use tariffs as an excuse to manipulate prices. At the local level, State Representative Cesar Aguilar introduced legislation to ban digital price tags. We need that bill reintroduced, along with different legislation to protect SNAP recipients from price manipulation.

It’s time for our lawmakers to demand real transparency from the retailers that claim to serve us. Arizona’s working families should not be at the mercy of large retailers using new technology and exploiting crises for their own financial gain.