Press Releases
Profiteering Watch: Procter & Gamble Boasts “Biggest Annual Sales Increase In 16 Years” After Excessive Price Hikes
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Procter & Gamble – the consumer-products giant that produces household necessities including Pampers Diapers, toothpaste, and bath tissue that families have struggled to afford — has just announced its “biggest annual sales increase in 16 years” in FY 2022 following substantial price hikes on all of its product U.S. categories. The company’s annual net earnings exploded by $436 Million to over $14.7 billion amid the price increases – including an 8% mark up on Tide and Gain Laundry Detergents, Downy Fabric Softener and Bounce Dryer Sheets. While company executives claimed labor and transportation costs forced up prices, the company had plenty of money to spend $19 billion on shareholder handouts through the year, while the company’s CEO took home $23.9 million in compensation in FY 2020-21.
Procter & Gamble’s claims that outside forces made them jack up prices nearly double digits on household necessities simply do not reconcile with their 16-year high sales and a multi-billion dollar handout to wealthy investors. They did have a choice, and they chose to profiteer. Leaving struggling families to choose between diapers and food is emblematic of the corporate greed run amok across several industries, where highly profitable companies are choosing to squeeze the maximum amount of profits out of consumers while falsely blaming workers for it.
Billion-dollar corporations like Procter & Gamble will go right on making inflation challenges worse through blatant profiteering if left to their own devices. That is all the more reason Congress must act swiftly to pass the Inflation Reduction Act to crack down on these greedy practices and ensure these big corporations finally pay their fair share in taxes. There is no better way for lawmakers to bring down costs for families and jumpstart the economy than dealing with high inflation at the root – corporate greed.”
Liz Zelnick, spokesperson for corporate watchdog Accountable.US
For months, Accountable.US has been documenting how clear pandemic profiteering and corporate greed from the big meatpacking, shipping, retail, clothing, food, trucking and railroad companies are making inflation/supply chain problems worse for everyday consumers. In our view, big industries are only compounding the problem by rewarding those in Congress obstructing every commonsense measure to fight the corporate greed that comes before them, no matter how widely the public supports the initiatives.
