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Before we break down the work of the past couple months, Economic Liberties and partners are excited to announce the second annual Anti-Monopoly Summit on May 21, 2024 from 9:15am-5:30pm at the Westin Washington, DC Downtown, followed by a celebratory happy hour. If you attended our inaugural Summit last May, you already know this is an event you don’t want to miss. Make sure to secure your ticket ahead of time here [[link removed]] .
FEATURED: Enforcers Take Actions to Lower Costs in Healthcare, Food, Housing, and More
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There’s a reason we keep saying that competition, not consolidation, leads to lower prices and better products. When antitrust enforcers crack down on consolidation, markets work better, innovation surges, and consumers everywhere enjoy a little relief to their pocketbooks. From healthcare to housing, food and more, the past few weeks of antimonopoly victories are a clear example of that.
The rent is too high because of price fixing: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes made a splash when she sued rent-setting software provider RealPage for facilitating de facto price-fixing by landlords in her state. This is just the latest development in the fight against “algorithmic price fixing,” an emerging threat across the economy that can have especially devastating consequences for housing [[link removed]] . The DOJ is also tackling it in the meat industry [[link removed]] , while private litigants take it on in hospitality [[link removed]] and rental housing [[link removed]] with support from the FTC and DOJ in both cases. As these suits and our recent joint brief [[link removed]] with LocalProgress illustrate, policymakers have many tools to fight back against this new price fixing tactic. Keep an eye out for more antitrust action to bring down housing costs, as the DOJ has launched [[link removed]] a criminal price-fixing probe into RealPage and a court recently ruled [[link removed]] that the DOJ can reopen its investigation into the National Association of Realtors’ use of anticompetitive conduct to inflate commissions.
More inhalers get cheaper: AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, and GlaxoSmithKline announced they would lower out-of-pocket costs of their asthma inhalers from hundreds of dollars to $35 [[link removed]] . The reason why? A Federal Trade Commission enforcement action [[link removed]] challenging bogus drug patents that Big Pharma uses to keep prices sky high—an action we advocated for in a letter [[link removed]] to the Department of Health and Human Services all the way back in 2021. After decades of exorbitant prices, this is a huge win for the more than 27 million Americans that suffer from asthma.
Keeping grocery prices down : In food and agriculture, scrutiny [[link removed]] from the DOJ Antitrust Division led to the recent abandonment of a merger between vegetable subsidiaries of Chiquita and Dole—a deal that would have raised prices prices for food products purchased by 85% [[link removed]] of American households. Just a few weeks prior, the FTC sued to block the Kroger-Albertsons mega-merger. As Economic Liberties has made clear in the public conversation, this merger would raise prices [[link removed]] and reduce food and pharmacy access [[link removed]] in many communities, while workers [[link removed]] will lose bargaining power and potentially face lower wages, worse working conditions, and layoffs.
Ending excessive credit card late fees: The CFPB finalized a rule banning excessive credit card late fees—one we advocated for in a December policy brief [[link removed]] and in outlets like CNBC [[link removed]] . The rule caps the typical late fee at $8 instead of $32, saving consumers an estimated $10 billion [[link removed]] annually. Naturally, big banks were unhappy that the government dared to check their profiteering, and promptly filed a lawsuit challenging the rule (and the very constitutionality of the CFPB).
THE LATEST
DOJ Brings Landmark Antitrust Suit Against Apple: The Department of Justice filed its much-anticipated monopolization suit against Apple last month, alleging the tech giant has illegally squashed competition and stifled innovation to keep consumers locked into its iPhone-centered ecosystem. The suit, hailed by legal experts as “even [[link removed]] stronger” [[link removed]] than expected, is a timely intervention as Apple’s empire subsumes an ever-growing assortment of industries— banking [[link removed]] , automobiles [[link removed]] , podcasts [[link removed]] , and more—as Director of Research Matt Stoller recently explained on Breaking Points [[link removed]] . The suit got an unexpected PR boost from none other than comedian Jon Stewart. Interviewing FTC Chair Lina Khan on The Daily Show [[link removed]] , Stewart revealed Apple had blocked him [[link removed]] from interviewing Khan on his AppleTV+ podcast in 2022. As we told the Washington Post [[link removed]] , the viral [[link removed]] segment underscored the urgency of the DOJ’s suit and spotlighted the antimonopoly movement on one of the biggest stages in television.
Capital One-Discover Mega-Merger Should Be Blocked: Capital One’s proposed $35 billion acquisition of Discover is the largest financial services deal in recent history—and one that faces significant regulatory headwinds, according to a new transaction analysis [[link removed]] from Economic Liberties. The analysis—as well as our joint letter [[link removed]] sent to regulators, and Sr. Policy Analyst Shahid Naeem’s appearance [[link removed]] before an elite audience at a Capitol Forum event—introduced a sober understanding of the deal’s harms and regulatory hurdles to a public discussion initially dominated by Capital One’s spin. [[link removed]] As American Banker [[link removed]] and others reported, the analysis shows that the merger would enable Capital One to access a regulatory loophole and charge merchants higher fees on debit transactions.
Impact of the UnitedHealth Group Hack : As a cyberattack on UnitedHealth Group-owned healthcare payments exchange Change Healthcare paralyzed broad swaths of the US healthcare system, Economic Liberties published a factsheet [[link removed]] to educate reporters on the crisis’ roots in consolidation—and sent a letter [[link removed]] to regulators making clear that the broader resilience of our healthcare system is at stake. With a sweeping DOJ investigation [[link removed]] into the healthcare giant underway, you can learn more about our perspective on the hack in Axios [[link removed]] , Star Tribune [[link removed]] , or on an episode of the healthcare podcast An Arm and a Leg titled “ The [[link removed]] Hack [[link removed]] . [[link removed]] ”


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