Consumer Rights

Written By Mitchell Estrada

PROPOSED / DRAFT — CONSUMER RIGHTS & COMPETITION

POSITION

Consumers should receive truthful information, transparent prices, understandable terms, secure handling of personal information, effective remedies for fraud, and the benefits of genuine market competition.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Markets work only when people can understand the transaction, compare alternatives, rely on material representations, and seek correction when a business takes money or information through deception.

PRICES, FEES & CONTRACT TERMS

Businesses should disclose the total mandatory price before purchase, including unavoidable fees. Material limitations, renewal terms, cancellation procedures, penalties, financing costs, and data practices should be presented clearly rather than hidden in misleading design or fine print.

A subscription should be reasonably easy to cancel through a method comparable to the method used to enroll. Businesses should provide confirmation of cancellation and should not continue charging after a valid cancellation request.

FRAUD, DECEPTION & REMEDIES

MPA supports clear and equal enforcement against:

  • Materially false advertising

  • Unauthorized charges

  • Bait-and-switch practices

  • Deliberately concealed mandatory fees

  • Impersonation and payment fraud

  • Sale of materially misrepresented goods or services

  • Retaliation against consumers who make good-faith complaints

Remedies should include correction, refund or restitution where appropriate, preservation of evidence, accessible dispute procedures, and proportionate penalties for intentional or repeated misconduct. Enforcement should distinguish fraud from a good-faith dispute or promptly corrected mistake.

PRODUCTS, SAFETY & RECALLS

Manufacturers and sellers should provide material safety information, report known serious hazards as required by law, maintain workable recall procedures, and preserve evidence related to serious injury or fraud. Standards should be evidence-based and should not unnecessarily block lawful products or small-business competition.

CAPITALISM & COMPETITION

MPA supports capitalism, not corporatism or government-protected monopoly.

Government should enforce clear laws against price fixing, bid rigging, bribery, fraud, criminal conspiracy, and anticompetitive conduct. Regulators should examine barriers that protect established companies from competition without materially protecting the public.

PUBLIC MONEY

Government officials or contractors who knowingly steal, divert, falsify, facilitate fraudulent payments, accept kickbacks, or conceal criminal misuse of public funds should face individual consequences where criminal culpability is established. Public programs should use auditing, beneficial-ownership verification, competitive procurement, and payment controls.

Detailed federal spending and procurement policy appears under Federal Spending & National Debt.

WHAT WE WILL MEASURE

Public reporting should track complaints, refunds and restitution, recurring unauthorized charges, deceptive-fee findings, recall completion, fraud losses, enforcement time, repeat offenders, market concentration, new-business entry, and regulatory barriers removed or justified.

Price Transparency and Consumer Protection

Receipt Transparency

Receipts should separately show:

  • base price;

  • taxes;

  • government fees;

  • private fees;

  • discounts;

  • final total.

Consumers should see both the real price and where their money went.

Optional Charges

Optional extras do not need to be included in the original price, but they must not be disguised as mandatory or automatically preselected without clear consent.

Healthcare Pricing

Where reasonably predictable, healthcare providers should provide a good-faith estimate of the patient's expected total financial responsibility.

Fuel Price Transparency and Competition

Gasoline pricing should be transparent enough for consumers and regulators to understand the major components of the retail price.

Reporting should identify where practicable:

  • crude-oil component;

  • refining costs/margins;

  • distribution;

  • retail margin;

  • federal taxes;

  • state/local taxes;

  • regional supply constraints.

Competition authorities should investigate credible evidence of:

  • collusion;

  • market manipulation;

  • anticompetitive conduct.

Government should not simply declare a lawful market price too high without evidence of misconduct.

Consumer Complaint and Enforcement Transparency

Aggregate Complaint Data

Regulators should publish anonymized aggregate information concerning consumer complaints.

This may include:

  • complaint categories;

  • companies involved;

  • resolution times;

  • substantiated violation rates;

  • enforcement actions;

  • repeat offenders.

Privacy Protection

Public complaint reporting should not unnecessarily expose consumers' personal or sensitive information.

Enforcement Performance

Agencies should publish meaningful information showing whether complaints actually produce:

  • investigations;

  • corrective action;

  • refunds;

  • penalties;

  • systemic reforms.

Core MPA Enforcement Principle

Rights that exist only on paper are not sufficient.

Whether the issue involves:

  • military service;

  • insurance;

  • healthcare;

  • employment;

  • credit;

  • housing;

  • utilities;

  • consumer transactions;

government should establish clear rights, reasonable enforcement deadlines, meaningful remedies, and serious consequences for knowing or repeated violations.

Enforcement Deadlines and Remedies

Prices and Mandatory Fees

The first price presented in an advertisement, menu, listing, search result, ticket offer, reservation, or checkout must include every mandatory charge that can reasonably be calculated at that time. A seller may separately itemize the components, but it may not reveal a compulsory private fee only after the consumer supplies payment information or materially commits to the transaction. An undisclosed mandatory fee must be refunded within 10 business days after a valid request. Knowing or repeated violations are enforceable as unfair or deceptive practices.

Enforcement

The Federal Trade Commission, sector regulators, state attorneys general, and other authorized agencies may seek refunds, restitution, civil penalties, corrective orders, and licensing consequences. Consumers retain access to ordinary courts for actual damages and injunctive relief where authorized. Penalties should increase for concealment, falsified records, retaliation, repeat offenses, and large-scale consumer harm.

PRICE FIXING, MARKET MANIPULATION & CONCENTRATED INDUSTRIES

Businesses remain free to set their own prices independently. They are not free to secretly coordinate prices, output, bids, wages, customers, territories, supply restrictions, purchasing terms, or market access.

Covered Conduct

Enforcement should address provable conduct including:

  • agreements among competitors to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices;

  • agreements to restrict production or withhold supply for the purpose of manipulating price;

  • bid rigging, customer allocation, territorial allocation, wage fixing, and no-poach agreements;

  • using consultants, trade groups, data brokers, shared algorithms, or another intermediary to exchange nonpublic future pricing or production plans and coordinate conduct that competitors could not lawfully coordinate directly;

  • dominant purchasers coordinating to suppress prices paid to farmers, ranchers, workers, or small suppliers while maintaining or increasing consumer prices;

  • retaliation against a supplier, employee, customer, or whistleblower who reports suspected price fixing or market manipulation.

Similar prices, rising prices, high profits, or market concentration may justify scrutiny but do not alone prove an illegal agreement. Liability requires evidence satisfying the applicable civil or criminal burden of proof.

Meatpacking and Agricultural Markets

  • The Department of Agriculture and Department of Justice should maintain a joint enforcement process for cattle, beef, pork, poultry, grain, seed, fertilizer, and other concentrated agricultural markets.

  • Large packers and processors should preserve transaction, bid, pricing, production, shutdown, and supply-allocation records for at least seven years and provide them under lawful compulsory process.

  • Public reporting should compare prices paid to producers, wholesale prices, retail prices, processing margins, capacity use, imports, exports, and documented supply disruptions without exposing an individual producer's confidential business information.

  • Farmers, ranchers, employees, and independent processors who make good-faith reports should receive enforceable protection against retaliation.

Thirty-Day Enforcement Decision

A covered federal price-fixing or market-manipulation investigation must reach an enforcement decision within 30 calendar days after it is formally opened. By the deadline, the agency must close the matter with written reasons, file a civil or administrative case, enter a public consent order, or make a documented criminal referral. Filing a case completes the investigative deadline; the later court or administrative proceeding retains ordinary due process.

Restitution, Fines and Criminal Accountability

  • Consumers, producers, workers, and public purchasers should receive restitution for proven overcharges or underpayments through direct payment, automatic credits, or another practical distribution method.

  • For a corporation that knowingly participates in price fixing, bid rigging, market allocation, or equivalent cartel conduct, the maximum financial penalty should be the greatest of $100 million, three times the unlawful gain, or three times the measurable loss imposed on victims.

  • An individual who knowingly directs or participates in criminal cartel conduct should face a fine of up to $1 million and imprisonment of up to 10 years, with the sentence determined by personal culpability, duration, concealment, leadership, repeat conduct, and actual harm.

  • A person should not face criminal punishment for an independent pricing decision, a good-faith mistake, negligence, or a price increase unsupported by proof of knowing criminal coordination.

  • Courts should be able to order divestiture, contract cancellation, license suspension, federal debarment, compliance monitoring, or temporary disqualification of responsible executives when narrower remedies will not stop a serious or repeated violation.

  • Destroying records, intimidating witnesses, falsifying data, or obstructing a lawful investigation should create separate consequences under applicable law.

Core MPA standard: Government should not set ordinary market prices. It should make competitors compete and impose consequences strong enough that proven price fixing is not merely treated as a cost of doing business.

Related policies: Insurance Claims, Denials & Bad-Faith Accountability; Transportation & Vehicle Consumer Rights; Utilities & Essential-Service Protections; Digital Ownership & the Right to Keep Purchases.

Status: Proposed / Draft — not yet formally adopted.

Originally published: August 15, 2026.

Last updated: September 26, 2026.

Version: Draft 0.6.

Mitchell Estrada
Previous

Criminal Justice, Prison, Jail & Detention Reform
Next

Constitutional Amendments