Over the past two weeks, we’ve outlined all of the ways that corporations use underhanded and exploitative tactics to grow record profits and squeeze as much money as possible out of the public. It can seem hopeless, but the good news is that there is a way out. We need a new paradigm to deal with high prices, one that involves Congress, federal regulatory and law enforcement agencies, state attorneys general and the White House working in tandem to tackle the corporate power that enables predatory pricing.

For our June special issue on pricing, Bilal Baydoun wrote about what government can actually do to protect the public from predatory pricing schemes. There are limits to the bully pulpit, just as there are to everything else. But combined with concrete regulatory actions, government can mitigate unnecessary costs that make life unaffordable. With agencies like the CFPB, FTC and the DOJ Antitrust Division taking major steps to revive antitrust and crack down on predatory junk fees, it’s already happening.

You can read the full piece here.

To close out the issue, The Prospect interviewed Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan about her work on President Biden’s Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing, an interagency team established in March designed to coordinate responses to the growing use of exploitative and misleading pricing tactics.

We discussed trends in pricing, the technologies that enable them and how the government can play a role in protecting the public. Despite ever-growing corporate greed, Khan is optimistic about what regulators can accomplish. "This is not about putting out signs that say, ‘Beware, predators are around,’" she says of the strike force. "The role of consumer protection is to stop predation."

You can read the full interview here.

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