The Corner Newsletter: July 06 , 2023
Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we take note of President Biden’s placement of competition policy at the center of his economic policy in a speech on Bidenomics he gave last week.
President Biden Sees Antimonopoly as One of Three Pillars of Bidenomics
Anita Jain
In a major speech last week, President Joe Biden identified the fight against monopoly as one of the three main pillars of his economic policy, along with infrastructure investment and worker education and training.
Noting that three quarters of U.S. industry has grown more concentrated under the misguided “trickle-down” economic policies of the last four decades, the President said, “That may have made things easier for big corporations, but for everybody else, it made it harder and more expensive. It got harder for small businesses to compete. It stifled innovation. It reduced wages for workers. And it made our supply chains more vulnerable.” He highlighted his administration’s reinvigoration of antitrust enforcement to address widespread corporate concentration, saying, “The cops are back on the beat enforcing antitrust laws.”
Biden also noted how his administration has cracked down on non-compete agreements, which the Federal Trade Commission has proposed banning. Such agreements stifle competition for workers and reduce wages by preventing 30 million workers, many of them low-wage, from leaving their job to take a higher paying position. “It’s one thing to have non-compete agreements when you’re dealing with trade secrets,” Biden said. “It’s another thing when you’re doing the same thing of flipping a hamburger, and you’re going to get five cents more by walking across the street to a different place.”
Open Markets Institute has long called for a ban on such clauses in employment contracts and spearheaded a petition, signed by other like-minded groups, that was sent to the FTC four years ago. The pivotal role competition policy currently plays within Bidenomics — the name given to the administration’s worker-centered policies — is the fruition of yearslong advocacy by Open Markets Institute, which commended the president for underscoring how reducing corporate concentration and antitrust enforcement helps build a fair economy.
“We are particularly gratified to see how effectively the President communicated the role monopoly plays in driving up prices for consumers, driving down wages for workers, stifling opportunities for entrepreneurs, and the hollowing out of supply chains and the nation’s industrial base,” Open Markets’ policy director Phillip Longman said in a statement. “We are now further thrilled to see the President capitalize on the broad popular appeal of these policies by highlighting them in the White House’s political messaging, as we have previously urged him to do.”
Biden’s remarks cap off a recent string of groundbreaking speeches by Cabinet members outlining a new vision for trade policy, one that prioritizes resilient supply chains and revitalizes U.S. manufacturing. One of these speeches was delivered by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai at a conference hosted by Open Markets Institute last month in which she underscored the break with the past, declaring, “Our focus has shifted from liberalization and the pursuit of efficiency and low costs to raising standards, building resiliency, driving sustainability, and fostering more inclusive prosperity at home and abroad.”
Tai’s remarks built on a major speech in April by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who spoke about a new “Washington consensus” that supports building back U.S. manufacturing capacity and reducing dependence on foreign nations to boost national and economic security.
Coming on the heels of these two talks, Biden’s remarks last week drive home his administration’s commitment to an economy that benefits workers and the middle class, not just the wealthy and large corporations.
Open Markets Appoints Dr. Courtney Radsch as Director of the Center for Journalism & Liberty
The Open Markets Institute and Center for Journalism & Liberty are pleased to announce Courtney C. Radsch, PhD, has joined our team as the new director of the Center for Journalism & Liberty. As director of theCenter for Journalism & Liberty, Dr. Radsch will produce and oversee cutting-edge research into news media market structures and help design smart policy solutions to protect and bolster journalism’s financial and editorial independence. Her biography can be viewed here.
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
Open Markets Institute’s senior legal analyst Daniel Hanley published an op-ed in the Democracy Journal arguing that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court has led an assault on administrative agencies that upends decades of precedent and is tantamount to a direct attack on responsive and democratic government.
BBC News quoted Courtney Radsch, newly appointed director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets, on Canada’s law mandating Google and Facebook pay news providers for displaying their content. "There is an increasing consensus around the world that Google and Facebook should pay for the news that they use," she said. "People realise that there is a need to protect journalism as a fundamental pillar of democracy.
Politico cited remarks made by Open Markets Institute’s executive director Barry Lynn while introducing U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai at last month’s OMI-hosted conference, which characterized Ambassador Tai as having “more fans in more places almost than Taylor Swift.”
Caroline Fredrickson, OMI’s strategic councilor on democracy and power, was quoted by the Guardian on a recent spate of decisions, including on affirmative action and LGBTQ rights, that display the Supreme Court’s conservative bent. “The court system has become so independent of American public opinion and desires — and certainly our understanding of the constitution — that it risks damaging democracy in a significant way,” she said. She was also interviewed on Channel Four on the Supreme Court’s rightward tilt, describing the country’s highest court as a “threat to democracy.”
Vox quoted Fredrickson discussing a recently surfaced audio tape of former president Donald Trump sharing classified material with civilians. “It’s clear when you’re laying a case in front of a jury, it’s a whole lot better to have something live than something that is on paper. And to be able to have the confirmation in Donald Trump’s voice, talking about national secrets with people who had no right to know about them … I think that impact on the listener is really profound,” she said.
Open Markets Institute’s senior fellow Johnny Ryan was quoted in several publications, including Reuters, Irish Times, and TechCrunch, arguing that a proposed law in Ireland will muzzle Big Tech critics. “Ireland’s enforcement of the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] against Big Tech, and how it upholds the data rights of everyone in Europe, should not be the subject of eleventh-hour amendments inserted during the end-of-term legislative rush,” Ryan said, speaking about a proposal that would allow the country’s Data Protection Commission to keep confidential any information shared during investigations into Big Tech companies. Ryan is also senior fellow at Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
The Supreme Court rejected Open Markets Institute’s request to review a lower court’s finding that Google scraped song lyrics from Genius and displayed them in search results. The move was covered by MediaPost and The Register.
🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
Meta lost its legal challenge to an order by Germany’s antitrust authority to stop collecting users’ data without their consent, dealing a big blow to the social network’s business model. The ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union will give antitrust authorities more leeway to use competition law to protect privacy in order to rein in Big Tech’s abusive practices. (Reuters)
The Federal Trade Commission is mobilizing to file a major antitrust suit against Amazon for punishing third-party sellers on its online marketplace who don't use the company's logistics services, like warehousing and shipping. The suit, expected to be filed in coming weeks, would be the FTC’s fourth against the retail giant this year. (Business Insider)
Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, has accused Google of abusing its monopoly in the digital advertising market in a lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court. The lawsuit charges the tech giant with undercutting potential revenues by news publishers, echoing the antitrust suit filed against Google by the Department of Justice’s earlier this year. (New York Times)
The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Apple must allow app developers to allow alternative payment options on its operating system in the tech giant’s legal battle with Epic Games. (BloombergLaw)
📈 VITAL STAT:
97%
Share of India’s 600 million smartphones that use Google’s Android mobile operating system. Google, fined by the Competition Commission of India for exploiting its dominant position, has recently challenged antitrust directives imposed on the company in the country’s Supreme Court. (Reuters)
📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
“Don’t Blame Medicare for Rising Medical Bills, Blame Monopolies.” Writing in the current issue of the Washington Monthly, Dartmouth researcher and Vermont state healthcare regulator Thom Walsh shows how the commercial health insurance sector faces far greater long-term financing deficits than Medicare, and how the crisis is largely the result of monopoly pricing by hospitals.
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