Last Friday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed Executive Order 2020-18, which included minor clarifications of her executive order that temporarily imposed enhanced restrictions on the excessive pricing of goods, materials, emergency supplies, and consumer food items.
Since the onset of this public health crisis, some businesses and individuals have continued to sell face masks, hand sanitizers, cleaning supplies, paper products, and other products that people might seek to purchase due to the threat of COVID-19 at unjustified, exceptionally high prices. Executive Order 2020-18 focuses enforcement resources on the cases most pertinent to the emergency by clarifying which price increases constitute price gouging.
"These are challenging times, and we must support one another, not take advantage of others," said Governor Whitmer. "I will continue to work closely with the Attorney General to enforce these protections and to hold bad actors accountable. I'm going to take every measure we can to mitigate the spread of coronavirus and protect Michigan families. We will get through this together as Michiganders."
Under Executive Order 2020-18, if a person has acquired any product from a retailer, the person must not resell that product in Michigan at a price that excessively higher than the purchase price at which they acquired the product.
A person cannot sell any product at a price that's more than 20% higher than what they paid for it as of March 9, 2020, unless it is not an emergency supply and costs more than $1,000. The only exceptions to this are if they can prove that the price increase is attributable to an increase in cost of bringing the product to market or an extraordinary discount was in effect as of March 9, 2020
These enhanced restrictions go into effect immediately, and will remain in place until April 16, 2020 at 11:59 p.m.
Published: Tue, Mar 24, 2020
