Kroger’s CEO blames credit card fees and fuel costs for rising prices

The case, which is being heard in Portland, Oregon, is expected to be decided at the end of September.

McMullen testified Wednesday when his company’s attorney asked him why food prices had gone up.

In his response, McMullen blamed rising operating and supplier costs for the price hike, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

But Kroger, he said, would not raise prices if its merger with Albertsons went through.

“We think that over time, value is going to be more and more important, and you can’t price your items above market,” McMullen said in court on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

McMullen’s comments come just a week after an FTC attorney questioned a Kroger executive about an internal email he sent about Kroger milk and egg prices.

“On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation,” Kroger’s senior director of pricing, Andy Groff, wrote to his bosses in March, Bloomberg reported.

Asked about the email, Groff testified that Kroger’s goal was “to get our inflation through to consumers,” according to Bloomberg.

“This cherry-picked email covers a specific period and does not reflect Kroger’s decades-long business model of undercutting prices for customers by cutting its margins,” a Kroger spokeswoman, Natalie Musumeci, told to Business Insider in a statement last week.

The growing anger over high food prices has caught the attention of both presidential nominees, who are looking to woo voters with their economic policies.

Last month, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a proposal for the first federal ban on food and grocery price gouging.

The proposal drew mixed reactions from business executives and economists, who said they saw the plan as an example of government overreach.

Former President Donald Trump said in a press conference last month that he could lower the cost of living by lowering energy prices.

“So when I win, I will immediately cut prices, starting from day one. We will end Kamala’s war on American energy and do the baby drill. We will drill the baby drill. That’s going to bring down the prices of everything, because energy brought it up,” Trump said.

Some experts, however, say Trump will likely fail to keep his promise.

“For the most part, it’s just a plate because the president really has no direct control,” Michael Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin, said of Trump’s proposal in an interview with The Wall Street Journal .

Kroger representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.