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Justice Department is looking into egg prices in antitrust probe, report says

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Eggs are displayed for sale in a Manhattan grocery store on Feb. 25, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into potential antitrust issues related to the surging price of eggs, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The investigation, which is in its early stages, includes a look at whether large egg producers have worked together to raise prices or reduce supply, the report said.

The news comes as the price of eggs has soared, leading some restaurants to announce menu changes and reports of grocery stores with empty shelves. For example, Denny’s announced last month that it was passing along rising egg costs to customers in the form of a surcharge.

In the latest consumer price index report, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed the price of eggs up 53% year over year. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the cost of eggs rose 15.2% just between December and January — this marked the largest increase in the eggs index since June 2015.

The price increases appear to be at least in part due to an outbreak of avian flu that has led egg producers to cull their populations. However, advocacy group Farm Action sent a letter last month to the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission, calling for an investigation into other causes.

CNBC has not independently confirmed that this investigation is ongoing. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Economics

The judge losing his patience with the Trump administration

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DONALD TRUMP likes picking fights with judges. In 2016 Mr Trump said a judge’s Mexican heritage rendered him incapable of fairly adjudicating fraud cases against Trump University, a for-profit institution that closed in 2011. Two years later the president condemned a ruling against his immigration policies as a “disgrace”. Lawsuits against him during the Biden years—including one for conspiring to steal the 2020 election—spurred many attacks.

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Economics

Jobs report April 2025:

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Job growth was stronger than expected in April despite worries over the impact of President Donald Trump’s blanket tariffs against U.S. trading partners.

Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 177,000 for the month, slightly below the downwardly revised 185,000 in March but above the Dow Jones estimate for 133,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

The unemployment rate, however, held at 4.2%, as expected., indicating that the labor market is holding relatively stable.

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Economics

Euro zone inflation, April 2025

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Shoppers buy fresh vegetables, fruit, and herbs at an outdoor produce market under green-striped canopies in Regensburg, Upper Palatinate, Bavaria, Germany, on April 19, 2025.

Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Euro zone inflation was unchanged at 2.2% in April, missing expectations for a move lower, flash data from statistics agency Eurostat showed Friday.

Economists polled by Reuters had been expecting the reading to come in at 2.1% in April compared to March’s 2.2% as inflation has been easing back towards the European Central Bank’s 2% target.

Core inflation, which excludes more volatile food, energy, alcohol and tobacco prices, accelerated to 2.7% from March’s 2.4%. The closely-watched services inflation print also picked up again, coming in at 3.9% compared to the previous 3.5% reading.

The increase in services inflation was likely “driven mainly by Easter timing effects,” Franziska Palmas, senior Europe economist at Capital Economics, said in a note. These effects would reverse in the coming month, she added, suggesting that this left the door open for further interest rate cuts from the European Central Bank.

“We think the services rate will decline significantly in the rest of this year as US tariffs weigh on activity and the labour market continues to weaken,” Palmas added.

ECB President Christine Lagarde told CNBC last week that “we’re heading towards our [inflation] target in the course of 2025, so that disinflationary process is so much on track that we are nearing completion.”

Lagarde and other policymakers last week warned the picture for inflation was less clear in the medium-term, with factors such as potential retaliation countermeasures from Europe against U.S. tariffs and fiscal shifts like Germany’s major infrastructure package coming into play.

Lagarde said the ECB would be “data dependent to the extreme,” when making interest rate decisions. The central bank last cut interest rates last month, taking its key rate — the deposit facility rate — to 2.25%, down from highs of 4% in mid-2023.

An interest cut in June seems appropriate amid many deflationary forces, ECB governing council member says

Several major euro zone economies had already earlier in the week released their latest inflation figures, which are harmonized for comparability across the bloc. Germany’s statistics office said Wednesday it expects consumer prices to have risen by 2.2% in April, below the previous month’s reading but slightly higher than expected. Meanwhile French harmonized inflation came in at 0.8%, also slightly ahead of expectations.

Data released earlier this week indicated that the euro zone economy could be picking up steam, with the bloc’s gross domestic product rising 0.4% in the first quarter of 2025, according to a preliminary reading. This was higher than the forecast of 0.2%, and followed a revised 0.2% growth print in the last quarter of 2024.

Growth is however widely expected to slow in the coming months due to the global tariff fallout.

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