Forced them how? The article doesn’t say. Why is anyone in the private sector listening to this twit much less following his orders?
Two weak supermarket chains merged. As part of the merger, they had to divest some of the stores where the former chains had competed in the same neighborhoods. Sounds like it worked out pretty well for the merged chains if some of the divested stores are being shut down, decreasing competition. The combined chains were number 2 behind Kroger in number of stores even after the divestures.
Albertsons itself almost failed in 2006 (a series of poor management decisions came home to roost), and shed a lot of stores at that time before being bailed out by a private equity firm.
Safeway was known for being overpriced with poor customer service.
From one of the links in the article:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-haggen-california-20150924-story.html
Albertsons and Safeway were ordered by federal regulators to divest those locations