It's the distributors jacking up the prices. Look at the shooters world powder. Tactical is still $29 and Precision is $48. They were both the same when they started life here in the U.S. The distributors heard the stories of same stuff as Varget and they gouged us.
Well maybe SW is still selling older lots of 'Tactical' bought in at lower prices whilst 'Precision' has a faster turnover and has to be priced against rapidly rising and more recent factory gate prices. I don't know, but this speculation is no more nor less valid than immediately assuming it's a result of blatant profiteering.
What I do know is that 'Precision' is made in a factory in the Semtin Region of the Czech Republic right in the middle of central Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic
Take one look at the map in the Wiki page and you can't get much closer to the centre of the European landmass. I don't know how Explosia's powders get to the sea from there, whether by road, rail or river transport, but it's a long, long way to any major port.
Then .......... There's Europe and North America being separated by the Atlantic Ocean. It's 4,682 miles from Europe's main port Rotterdam to Mobile. (I don't know where SW's packing plant is, therefore which port it uses, but in any event, it's again a long, long way.) One reason so many shooting goods prices have gone through the roof is sea transport costs.
https://optimoroute.com/why-is-shipping-so-expensive/
Note the 547% increase in hiring and moving a 40ft box quoted, OK that's from China but I bet transatlantic price increases aren't that much smaller, if at all.
Then, the stuff still has to be trucked or rail-hauled from the port to wherever SW is located - and the US is as big as Europe, so that might be another thousand miles or so. Road and rail transport costs have risen astronomically too over the last year.
Then, there are European gas prices which have risen by three-figure percentage points since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and as the pressure on Putin is intensified and he retaliates by cutting gas supplies to the West are being forecast to possibly double again by the end of this year. Gas produces most electricity in Europe, so its price is soaring, but is also a major feedstock for powder manufacturing.
Upshot is that the factory gate price will be higher, probably a lot higher, for each new order, and the delivered price even more so with the transport costs crisis.
The US only has one factory supplying handloaders powders and it only makes ball types. Every kernel of extruded powder is imported, the shortest distance being from Quebec Province in Canada, the longest southern Australia. No wonder costs are rising, and rising a lot!
Primers are a different kettle of fish in the US as they're nearly all produced domestically, so it's more an issue of supply being insufficient for demand. I've little doubt that some people at every point in the factory to gunshop supply chain are seeing and seizing opportunities to load their margins. At the end of the day, the final customer - you and me - have to decide whether to pay those asking prices, or to wait 'until they drop to sensible levels'. The $64,000 questions are 1) will they drop to 'sensible levels'?, and 2) if so, how long is it going to take? My own view is that they will eventually drop, but the prices of even a couple of years ago are gone forever ...... and not by a small amount either.