But has demand gone down? The gummed up supply chains created a lot of pent up demand. It's going to take a while to satisfy that demand. Compounding this, pandemic checks injected a massive amount of dollars into the economy [1].
It's simplistic, but take this analogy. A factory builds 1,000 doodads per year. COVID shut it down for a year. Then after COVID it starts producing 1,100 doodads per year. It's going to take 10 years to satisfy the pent up demand. Of course the real world is more complicated, but the fact that prices remain high after the supply chain issues are resolved isn't at all indicative of nefarious or anti competitive behavior.
It's simplistic, but take this analogy. A factory builds 1,000 doodads per year. COVID shut it down for a year. Then after COVID it starts producing 1,100 doodads per year. It's going to take 10 years to satisfy the pent up demand. Of course the real world is more complicated, but the fact that prices remain high after the supply chain issues are resolved isn't at all indicative of nefarious or anti competitive behavior.
1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL