Open Markets Institute was mentioned in an article in support of Beth Baltzan, an adviser to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and a former senior fellow at OMI, who is being targeted by Big Tech firms and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.  

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is the communications arm of corporate America and their allies in the conservative movement. Their editorials are de facto press releases for industry, arguing their preferences and attacking their allies. You know where you stand in taking on corporate power by how many times you’re attacked in the WSJ. So far, Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan has racked up 82 editorials, about one for every 11 days of her tenure.

But a hit piece last week brought a new and unusual enemy to the Journal’s upscale readers: a staff adviser in U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s office.

The editorial, claiming to reveal “the story behind Biden’s trade failure,” conjured up a grand conspiracy whereby Khan and anti-monopoly advocates like Rethink Trade, the Open Markets Institute, and Public Citizen have manipulated Tai into acting against the country’s trade interests, which coincidentally align with corporate America’s interests.

The behind-the-scenes story is that Big Tech platforms are angry that Tai withdrew U.S. support for so-called “digital trade,” a concept the industry basically invented and sold to public officials as a means to prevent additional legal liability against them or restrictions on personal data flows. Now that they can’t win in trade deals the immunity they sought to circumvent national legislatures, the platforms and their lobbyists (many of whom once worked at USTR) are lashing out at the people they hold responsible.

That includes Tai, but also senior adviser Elizabeth Baltzan, caught up in this apparently because she was once a fellow at Open Markets. The point is to highlight Baltzan as a conduit between anti-monopoly groups and Tai, and to use that to besmirch Tai as a left-wing cat’s-paw.

In the past week, Baltzan has had her name cited in the WSJ editorial, had her emails posted on a U.S. Chamber of Commerce mini-site, and been harassed for financial records, calendar entries, and other documents by Republican lawmakers and opposition research specialists.

The ferocity of the witch hunt against a staff member is unusual. But while taking aim at the administrative state is a hallmark of Trump’s America, this effort is being carried out on behalf of the conservative business interests that once controlled the Republican Party.

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