Now it's Republicans blaming American companies for inflation

Source: Politico

04/16/2026 05:43 PM EDT


When Democrats were grappling with sky-high inflation just a couple of years ago, Donald Trump called their plans to fight price gouging by American companies tantamount to communism. Now that it’s the Republican Party in the affordability hot seat, Trump Cabinet members — and GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill — are doing much the same, laying into CEOs and calling for new regulations and antitrust suits.

“They are making money hand over fist,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of insurance companies at a Thursday Ways and Means Committee hearing. Later, he agreed with House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) that the Federal Trade Commission needed to start bringing some antitrust suits against health industry firms.

Facing a rising cost of living that threatens their chances to hold onto their majorities in Congress in November, Republican members of Congress and Trump officials testifying before their committees Thursday repeatedly made their longtime allies in industry the scapegoat. It was yet another indication of how much Trump’s populist politics have changed the party of business, and how deep a hole polls show Republicans are in right now on the economy.

“Industry consolidation with huge companies swallowing up various parts of the health care system has helped pad the bottom line of big corporations, while doing little to support the health or well-being of working class Americans,” said Jason Smith, the Missouri Republican who chairs the Ways and Means Committee. Smith decried “major health insurance empires” and hospital CEOs who’d “driven up prices without expanding access to care.”. Smith is bringing health systems’ leaders to testify before his panel later this month.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/16/cabinet-hearings-populism-00877139