Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey has sent letters to Amazon, Target and Walmart over concerns that pricing decisions made at the retail giants since the pandemic may have been driven by aggressive push for profits at the expense of everyday Americans’ wallets.

Casey, a three-term Democrat who is in a tight re-election battle that could tip his party’s razor-thin majority in the Senate, says in the letters that between June 30, 2020, and June 30, 2022, corporate profits in the United States rose by 75%, roughly five times as fast as inflation, and that the three megaretailers were among the beneficiaries of that phenomenon, which he called ‘greedflation.’

Amazon, Casey said, has seen its profits increase as much as 61% over that time period, while Target’s profit increased 31.7% and Walmart’s was up 10%, which was about 25% higher overall than they were pre-pandemic.

Meanwhile, an average Pennsylvania family has paid almost $7,000 more ‘toward greedflation,’ Casey says.

‘Americans deserve to pay fair prices, and corporations must be held accountable for taking advantage of working families,’ he writes.

In a follow-up interview with NBC News, Casey went even further, questioning whether the companies may have been engaging in price gouging.

‘Someone’s got to be the cop on the beat here and create a measure of pressure and deterrence for these skyrocketing prices,’ he said. ‘If they’re not engaged in gouging, then they have nothing to worry about,’ the senator said about the retailers.

In a statement, Amazon said: “We work hard every day to offer low prices in our store. Third-party analysis confirms Amazon consistently delivers low prices.’

‘For seven consecutive years, an independent study from Profitero found prices in Amazon’s store to be the lowest online prices among all major U.S. retailers, with prices that were an average of 16% less expensive than competitors’ in 2023.’ the company said.

NBC News has also reached out to Target and Walmart for comment.

There remains debate about the root causes of the soaring consumer prices that have occurred since the pandemic. Most economists have blamed a confluence of factors that include acute supply chain disruptions — and resulting shortages — sparked by the economic slowdown during the pandemic, alongside aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus enacted to prevent a recession.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Olivier Blanchard, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, captured the lingering uncertainty about how much each of those factors has contributed to the price surges.

‘How much came from Covid shock, supply chain disruptions? How much came from strong fiscal policy or weak or loose monetary policy? I think this hasn’t been established and that remains to be done,’ he said.  

As for ‘greedflation,’ Blanchard acknowledged that corporate profits have increased sharply but that this was largely unavoidable.

‘You may disagree, you may hate it, but it’s the way the market works,’ he said. ‘Nobody is trying to school the consumers. It just happens.’ 

Casey argues corporations have gone too far.

‘Price increases that consumers have been confronted with have not been inflationary increases but, instead, greedflation-related increases,’ he writes. ‘It is now readily apparent that corporations have long had the ability to lower consumers’ costs and still turn a profit.’

Amazon, Target and Walmart have each recently announced moves to lower prices for certain goods or release new value-based products.

But Casey is seeking information about the specific decision-making process that led to those announcements: whether it was in response to economic conditions or simply to ward off negative press.

‘I don’t think this is interfering in business decisions — we’re not looking at setting prices,’ he said. ‘We’re just telling them that if they’ve been involved in price gouging, there are going to be consequences.’

More than half a million portable electronic device chargers sold exclusively at Costco are being recalled after reports they can overheat and catch fire.

The devices, called myCharge POWER HUB All-In-One, allegedly caused at least two residential fires.

In a notice posted on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website, myCharge, also known as RFA Brands of Birmingham, Michigan, said 567,000 of the chargers are affected.

The company said it was aware of 120 reports of the chargers overheating, including two reports of residential fires resulting in approximately $165,000 in claimed property damage.

It said Costco has also received 115 returns of the portable chargers in which customers complained of melting, expanding, smoking, fire, burning, exploding or sparking. There have been no reports of injuries requiring medical attention, myCharge said.

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled portable chargers and contact myCharge at 888-251-2026 or compliance@mycharge.com for a free replacement portable charger, the company said.

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are set to see plenty of attendees — but travel data shows there are still opportunities for last-minute deal-hunters to capitalize on current market dynamics.

Roughly a month out from the Friday, July 26, torch-lighting ceremony that will kick off the games, more than 75% of Paris-area rooms tracked by analytics firm CoStar have been booked over the Games’ opening weekend. That compares with approximately 42% occupancy over the same weekend in 2023.

“Three out of four rooms is certainly a healthy performance,” said Jan Freitag, national director for hospitality market analytics at CoStar.

Freitag said occupancy would likely only increase as the Games approach, especially as people — primarily those in Europe who can make the trip by car or train — decide at the last minute that they want to attend. There hasn’t been a Summer Olympics played on the European continent since the Athens Games in 2004.

The government in Paris is spending an estimated $9.7 billion on preparation for the Games, with hopes for 15 million visitors between late July and early September.

Unprecedented security and cleanup efforts have been undertaken, including a plan to prep the Seine river for competition — an effort highlighted by President Emmanuel Macron personally with a promise to take a dip in the water.

But nothing is guaranteed, and some would-be visitors to the City of Lights might be just as inclined to forgo the trip to avoid crowds, Freitag said.

“It’s a very, very special event — but it will be interesting to see how this number pans out compared to other Augusts in prior years,” he said. “There are always people who are staying away from these events too.”

Other travel sites showed a plethora of hotel deals still available — with at least one 3-star hotel in the heart of Paris showing 50% off usual rates for high summer, according to Google.

Airfares tracked by digital booking site Hopper show flights to Paris from the U.S. during the weekend of the opening ceremony averaging about $877 per ticket.

That is down 27% compared with the same period last year — but Hopper economist Hayley Berg said that largely reflects a step-down from the sky-high prices seen during the post-pandemic “revenge travel” surge that continued into 2023, along with greater seating capacity being offered by air carriers.

“This rebalancing of supply and demand, combined with the outliers of 2023 prices, mean that airfare this summer to Paris costs less than last year, even with the Olympics ahead,” Berg wrote in a statement.

“We expect that as Olympic trials complete and the Games grow closer, prices will surge as flights begin to sell out on specific travel dates,” Berg added.

In fact, bookings on the Hopper app for trips to Paris around the Olympic Games dates have doubled compared with last year at this time.

A French tourism minister recently said international flight arrivals to Paris were already up 24% for the period covering the Summer Games.

U.S. airfares in May were down 16% from last year, according to the latest reading from the consumer price index — and overall, fares have returned to prepandemic levels.

But for would-be travelers with middle to lower incomes, Freitag said, a trip to Paris this summer is likely out of the question.

“The headline is bifurcation,” he said. “For the very high and high end, there’s still a lot of interest and money for high-end leisure and staying in upscale accommodations.”

But households making less than $75,000 annually or so “are feeling the pinch of higher inflation rates,” Freitag said. While the inflation rate has come down significantly from its peak in the summer of 2022, it still hovers just above the Federal Reserve’s desired 2% mark.

“In the basket of things that you have to buy versus want to buy, have-to-buy items like car insurance are now so much more expensive versus want-to-buy like weekend trips,” he said. “So we are seeing a deceleration of that demand, especially for midscale-type properties.”

French officials have cautioned that while the boost from tourism should be substantial — more than $1 billion using the most conservative assumptions — it could take a year or longer to tabulate the true impact.

And historically, the ultimate economic effect for Olympic host cities has been mixed. A Council on Foreign Relations report notes that while the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona are often cited as a tourism success story, there has been roughly an even split between cities that have seen some payoff from hosting the Olympics and those that haven’t.