Chair Khan on CBS 60 Minutes, Rep. AOC-Lina Khan Townhall, DOJ Takes on Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly, the Kroger-Albertsons Trial, and More

It’s always exciting to see the antimonopoly movement’s work to protect working families showcased on a national stage, which is why we were thrilled to see this weekend’s powerful 60 Minutes profile of Chair Khan. The segment covered the FTC’s work under Chair Khan to tackle corporate consolidation, lower high grocery prices and inhaler costs, and protect workers by banning noncompetes. It also highlighted the overwhelming public support for her work—from taxi workers to pharmacists to law students—in contrast to narrow opposition from billionaire monopolists. 

A standout moment of the 60 Minutes profile was a town hall hosted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez with Chair Lina Khan in the Bronx. Economic Liberties was proud to support and attend this event, where one of our pharmacist partners, Ray Macioci, shared his story. The room was packed with small business owners, doctors, taxi drivers, housing organizers, and other Bronx residents.

AOC kicked off the event, praising the FTC’s winning record and underscoring the urgent need for bold leaders in Washington D.C.—like Chair Khan—who aren’t afraid to take on corporate interests. Following attendees’ firsthand accounts of abuse by powerful corporations, Chair Khan talked about how enforcers are fighting back, to loud applause and cheers. The town hall’s success and subsequent attention was a microcosm of the impact of the antimonopoly movement’s efforts to protect workers, consumers, and small business owners. 

And Chair Khan and AAG Kanter show no sign of slowing down. Antimonopoly policies have become a key tentpole of a fair economic agenda, one that many public officials and elected politicians are eager to adopt. In recent months, a number of members of Congress have loudly embraced the antitrust enforcers’ work—ranging from moderates like Jackey Rosen and Jon Tester to progressive stars like AOC to even (usually hostile) Republicans like James Comer. Recent polling from More Perfect Union shows that huge majority of Americans (81%!) are more concerned than ever with big corporation’s influence over the economy. We challenge you to watch the recording of the town hall event and not feel fired up about the future of this movement! 

Now, onto the latest news and work: 

Kroger Admits to Pandemic Price Gouging in FTC Merger Hearing. High food prices continue to concern Americans. But the FTC’s court challenge to the Kroger-Albertson’s merger, which wrapped up this week, is demonstrating that we’re right to think this isn’t just about higher supply and labor costs getting passed down to shoppers. Our Research Manager Laurel Kilgour was on the ground in Portland for the trial—reporting real time updates that led to viral tweet threads and punchy headlines. Shockingly, when under oath, executives from the two companies told a very different story than their corporate press releases. Kroger’s senior director for pricing admitted to price gouging consumers on staples like milk and eggs during the pandemic. As for those forward-looking promises that the deal won’t raise costs for shoppers, CEO Rodney McMullen testified that its claims are legally unenforceable. Albertsons executives also testified they and their private equity backers will receive tens of millions of dollars in golden parachute payments if the merger goes through. Taken altogether, the hearing confirmed what Economic Liberties and our partners in labor have been saying about this merger since 2022: it will raise prices and threaten good jobs. 

Google Destroyed Journalism, But Now the American People Are Having Their Day in Court. We kicked off our coverage of the second Google trial with a curtain raiser event, in partnership with News Media Alliance and Digital Content Next, arguing that this trial was not merely about Google’s monopoly power but about the future of journalism and our democracy. The crisis facing journalism was not simply an inevitable result of ‘the internet.’ Big Tech giants like Google monopolized advertising technology, the plumbing of online commerce. Now, journalists, publishers, and concerned citizens are having their day in court. In the US v. Google AdTech trial, the Department of Justice is following up on its trial victory against Google’s search monopoly to once again make the argument that the tech behemoth is acting as an illegal monopolist, this time in the field of advertising. As our Sr. Legal Counsel Lee Hepner put it, fundamentally, this case is about how the industry suffers from Google’s role as “the dominant buyer, seller, and broker of digital ads across the open web.” Economic Liberties’ Big Tech on Trial is on the ground along with our partners Check My Ads shedding light on the proceedings and informing coverage. You can read more at US v. GoogleAds.

FTC Cracks Down on Mafia-esque Prescription Drug Middlemen. If you’re a regular follower of our work, you’ve definitely heard us talk about pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and the role they play in jacking up drug prices for patients and harming independent pharmacists. Ever since we first mentioned them in our Courage to Learn paper back in 2021, we’ve been shedding light on—and advocate for enforcement against—the big three PBMs: CVS Health’s Caremark, Cigna’s ESI, and United Health Group’s Optum. That’s why, last Friday, we were pumped to see the FTC file a groundbreaking suit against the dominant PBMs, specifically targeting how their illegal rebate scheme has inflated the price of insulin—a life saving drug that’s soared over 1,200% in price since 1999—while also putting name brand drug manufacturers on notice. As our new Senior Healthcare Policy Analyst Emma Freer told reporters, this suit adds to that “mounting, bipartisan criticism” of PBMs, evidenced by a chorus of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that came out in support of it—from James Comer to Pramila Jayapal. Now, it’s clear the PBMs are desperate and scared. Mere days before the suit, Cigna filed a baseless defamation lawsuit against the FTC’s substantive interim 6(b) report—a tactic straight out of the monopolists playbook (More examples in our Corporations v. the People tracker).   

DOJ Sues RealPage For Jacking Up Rents Too Damn High. Along with food and healthcare, the high cost of housing continues to be a massive financial burden on American families. And, no, it’s not exclusively a matter of supply and demand, as many policymakers would have you believe. Antitrust investigations have revealed software-enabled price fixing as a major culprit behind climbing rents. In August, the Department of Justice and eight states sued RealPage, America’s monopoly provider of algorithmic rent-fixing services, for pushing landlords to raise prices as high as possible. The complaint turned up evidence of brazen boasting of anticompetitive behavior—one landlord actually described RealPage as “classic price fixing.” As Sr. Advisor Faiz Shakir noted on MSNBC, RealPage’s business model is just part of a larger pattern of powerful corporations using market power and anticompetitive behavior to end fair pricing for Americans. In fact, our own Matt Stoller’s latest BIG newsletter revealed how up to a quarter of rental inflation from 2020-2024 could be due to these rent price-fixing conspiracies from corporate landlords. The lawsuit comes on the heels of San Francisco’s first-in-the-nation municipal ban on RealPage, supported by testimony from Sr. Legal Counsel Lee Hepner, and an April joint brief from Economic Liberties and LocalProgress on state and local solutions to rent-fixing. Stay tuned for more work from us on taking on rent-fixing across the states. 

Pushing the White House to Close the De Minimis Trade Loophole to Protect Americans. You might not have heard of the de minimis loophole, but it’s a highly-consequential and flawed trade policy that allows imports valued under $800 to enter the U.S. without inspection, tariffs or taxes. The policy has led to an overwhelming surge of uninspected low-value e-commerce packages, mainly from China, that evade U.S. trade enforcement and safety standards. With four million such shipments now arriving daily, deadly imports, including increasingly fentanyl, are buried among packages from Amazon, Schein, Temu, and other e-commerce giants. The loophole hurts US manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. After House Republicans blocked a crucial bill to eliminate the loophole, our Rethink Trade program has been advocating vigorously for the White House to use its existing, expansive authority under the 1930 statute that established de minimis in the first place to close the loophole. Our prolific team has been producing legal analyses, podcasts, and explainer videos; talking to the media; and partnering in coalition with the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) and other U.S. business groups, unions, law enforcement organizations, and organizations representing families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl.

A few weeks ago, a diverse set of more than 125 members of Congress sent a letter to the White House with an ask to close the loophole—with our own Lori Wallach participating in a press briefing with members of congress covered in The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, POLITICO, and more. Later that week, the White House publicly acknowledged this issue, signaling a step forward by proposing rules to narrow the types of goods that can use the loophole. However, the announcement did not change policy yet—it only promised future rulemaking. While the White House's stance is a positive first step, it leaves much work ahead to ensure the loophole is actually closed. Given the stakes, Rethink Trade will continue pushing for a comprehensive fix, such as excluding all commercial shipments from the program.

• Economic Liberties, Rep. Summer Lee talk monopoly power at CBC Week: Director of Policy and Advocacy Morgan Harper joined Rep. Summer Lee onstage at Congressional Black Caucus week to discuss the importance for Black communities of taking on corporate power in politics.

   

• Report exposes food industry consolidation: In collaboration with antimonopoly lawyer Basel Musherbash, our friends at Farm Action US have released a landmark report exposing the extent of consolidation across the food industry.

   

• Rethink Trade releases interactive database on digital trade threats to states: A first-of-its-kind, interactive online map and database alerting the public of the more than 100 state bills that may be preempted by “digital trade” provisions pushed by Big Tech lobbyists. The tracker was featured in Politico’s Morning Tech and accompanied by a new op-ed in Governing.

   

• New Book on Canadian Monopolies: Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar are coming out with a new book, The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians. Don’t miss a foundational antimonopoly tract for our northern neighbor.

   

• FTC investigating surveillance pricing: The FTC in July launched an inquiry into surveillance pricing, a pricing practice that leverages personal data to extract maximal consumer surplus. Companies asked to cough up more info include McKinsey, JPMorgan Chase, and Mastercard. Our friends at The American Prospect took a deep dive into what a dystopia of individual prices might look like in their June issue on pricing.

   

• DOT investigates airlines rewards programs: The Department of Justice is investigating major airlines for devaluing frequent flyer points. As Sr. Fellow for Aviation William McGee told Travel Weekly, “people enter programs with the best of faith. They spend decades playing by the rules. Then the goal posts keep getting pushed further and further back.”

   

• Amicus brief vs. Disney successful: Along with several partners, Economic Liberties filed an amicus brief in Fubo v. Disney, calling for a preliminary injunction against the anticompetitive Disney/Fox/Warner sports streaming venture. Fubo won the injunction in August.

   

• Is Apple’s power as a buyer an obstacle to re-shoring semiconductor manufacturing? Director of Research Matt Stoller and Research Manager Laurel Kilgour make the case in a Semiconductor Digest op-ed.

   

• Enforcers and the next generation of  anti-monopolists mingle at Economic Liberties Happy Hour: As Politico noted, the stars—DOJ AAG Jonathan Kanter and FTC Chair Lina Khan, that is—were out at Economic Liberties happy hour for law school students, sharing wisdom and inspiration in rousing speeches. 

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