‘Me too, Cookie Monster’: Brown calls out companies for ‘shrinkflation’

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) on Monday called for “shrinkflation” at companies after Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster expressed dissatisfaction with the practice in a social media post.

“I hate shrinkflation! The cookies are getting smaller,” said Cookie Monster. post on Platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Brown, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, echoed the fuzzy blue Sesame Street character and criticized companies for reducing the size of their products without lowering prices.

“Me too, Cookie Monster,” Brown wrote to X. “Big companies reduce the size of their products without lowering prices in order to pay their CEO’s bonuses. People in my state of Ohio are fed up. They should get all the cookies they paid for.”

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) also responded to Cookie Monster’s post on Monday, saying, “I’m all for it.”

Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Casey are preparing for tough re-election races in November. Former President Trump won Ohio in both 2016 and 2020. He also won Pennsylvania in 2016, but lost the state to President Biden by a narrow margin four years later.

The White House similarly targeted “shrinkflation” with Biden ahead of the Super Bowl last month. Publish your video It denounced the practice as a “rip-off.”

“Some companies are trying to move quickly, chipping away at their products and hoping they don’t get noticed,” Biden said in the video. “Give it a break. The American people are tired of being played for. I’m calling on corporations to stop this.”

Americans are complaining that high inflation has caused companies to raise prices or turn to “shrinkflation.”

Inflation, which reached a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022, has eased steadily over the past year and a half and stood at 3.1% in January, as measured by the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index (CPI). It dropped to .

A smaller size may be less noticeable to shoppers than a large price increase, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics takes both into account when calculating CPI.

Despite the Federal Reserve’s repeated interest rate hikes aimed at curbing inflation, the economy has remained surprisingly resilient, with job creation continuing to exceed expectations while keeping unemployment below 4%. ing.

As inflation continues to decline and the United States appears to have avoided a widely expected recession, many are touting an apparent “soft landing” for the economy.

But Biden and Democrats have struggled to change Americans’ largely negative views about the economy.