> The pandemic had upended global supply chains, making it harder for corporations to acquire the stuff they needed to make their products. This should have squeezed their profit margins. Instead, as the economy began opening up, corporate profits were wildly outpacing growth in consumer spending power.

It depends on the price elasticity of the good. In the example given, that of chips and the cars that depend on them, people were demonstrably willing to pay the premium. In this instance price hikes are a useful mechanism for allocating limited supply to the areas where it's most valued. That this mechanism happens to drive high margins is uncomfortable, but vindictiveness isn't a good basis for policy.

My problem with this article as a whole is that it presents this toolkit as a novel approach to fighting inflation as such, when, if it's applicable at all, it's only been shown to be so in the unusual case of inflation driven mostly by massive supply shocks, e.g. Covid and WWII.