Back in January, I traveled to Brussels to attend “Antitrust, Regulation and the Next World Order”, an annual conference that Politico called the “anti-Davos.” On my first day there, I heard it described as Woodstock for antitrust.
During the Trump years, the European Union led the world in taking on major tech platforms. Even in the shadow of long-held conservative approaches to antitrust and a lucrative corporate lobbying sector, Eurocrats were enforcing data privacy laws and fighting mergers across sectors.
In recent years, the tables have turned, and our side of the Atlantic now leads in taking anti-monopoly action. Figures in the Biden administration like Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter represent the vanguard of a revolution in thinking about political economy, making the connection between corporate abuses of market power to the global erosion of democracy and civil liberties.
For our April 2024 issue, I wrote about my time in Brussels and why, despite ever-greater unchecked corporate power and the rise of anti-democratic forces across the globe, European policymakers have been slow to act. The European Union has enough problems: raging war, energy shortfalls, a migrant crisis, rising nationalist sentiment. In contrast, it’s no wonder that so many seem to believe that political economy should take a backseat—but maybe that’s exactly what Europe is getting wrong.
You can read the full story for our April 2024 issue here.
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