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FEATURED: New State and Local Campaign to End Rental-Price Fixing
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The cost of housing is a massive burden on the finances of millions of American families. That's especially true for renters, who have seen their monthly payments skyrocket over the past several years. This isn’t only supply and demand at work. A key culprit in the surge in rents is also the growth of software-enabled collusion by companies like RealPage and Yardi. According to several investigations and legal complaints, this kind of software offers landlords a backdoor way of colluding to raise rents in multi-family housing units.
To tackle this, Economic Liberties has launched a new campaign, “ [[link removed]] End [[link removed]] Rental Price-Fixing [[link removed]] ,” that will serve as an organizing hub for state and local efforts to eliminate this abusive practice. The launch comes on the heels of the Washington, D.C. and Arizona Attorneys General’s pioneering state antitrust suits against RealPage—the leading provider of rental price-fixing software—as well as a federal suit filed by the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and eight states.
Economic Liberties’ campaign builds on policy ideas outlined in our joint brief [[link removed]] with Local Progress on state and local solutions to rent-fixing. Economic Liberties staff have testified on relevant bills in New Jersey [[link removed]] and San Francisco [[link removed]] (which passed a first-in-the-nation to ban the use of algorithmic rent setting software earlier this fall), and they are shaping the public narrative in the press, with mentions in The Atlantic [[link removed]] , CBS [[link removed]] , and a slew of local outlets [[link removed]] . We also recently hosted Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes at our office in D.C., where she sat down with state and local director Pat Garofalo for a video interview [[link removed]] to discuss her approach to protecting Arizonans from companies like RealPage, while D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb emphasized the political salience of this issue at an Economic Liberties gathering.
Check out the End Rental Price-Fixing campaign microsite [[link removed]] to learn more!
THE LATEST
FTC Finalizes “Click-to-Cancel” Rule to End Subscription Traps. The FTC recently finalized a rule [[link removed]] to put an end to subscription traps we’re all too familiar with—websites and services that make it easy for customers to sign up, and all but impossible for them to leave. Anyone who has tried to cancel a gym, software or cable subscription will recognize this practice. Unsurprisingly, industry lobby groups are already launching baseless lawsuits to put a stop to this rule and keep the world safe for Planet Fitness’ bottom line. Meanwhile, consumers across the country— especially on Reddit [[link removed]] —are celebrating the rule, perhaps the most popular rulemaking we’ve seen in recent history!
FTC Bags Another Big Merger Trial Victory. In a major victory for Chair Khan’s FTC, the agency successfully blocked [[link removed]] the $8.5 billion merger of Tapestry and Capri Holdings—which, if completed, would have created a monopoly in the market for accessible-luxury handbags. The decision bumps the FTC’s merger win count up to 14 [[link removed]] and bodes well for the future of this enforcement agenda, with the court citing the FTC and DOJ’s 2023 Merger Guidelines. As the judge wrote in the first line of the court’s decision [[link removed]] , “Antitrust has come into fashion.”
DOJ Antitrust Division Sues Visa, Economic Liberties Keeps Pressure on to Promote Competition in Payments Networks . The Department of Justice has filed a major antitrust suit [[link removed]] against Visa for using its power to box out competitors and rival platforms from the debit payments market, imposing unfair price hikes on consumers and small businesses. Visa controls over 60% of all US debit transactions; the DOJ argues Visa entrenched this dominance through exclusionary contracts and payoffs to would-be competitors like Apple. While the suit is an important step to boosting competition in the market for debit payment processing, the Credit Card Competition Act remains essential to end Visa and Mastercard’s private sales tax on the credit side. Economic Liberties continues to advocate for this through research [[link removed]] and ongoing organizing [[link removed]] efforts.
Comparing Biden and Trump’s Antitrust Records. Our latest report, Competition at a Crossroads [[link removed]] , presents an in-depth comparative analysis of the Biden-Harris and Trump-Pence administrations on antitrust policy. While Trump-Pence made notable strides by launching major cases against Big Tech, their overall strategy remained bound to a consolidation-friendly status quo. In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration has led a comprehensive, proactive campaign against corporate monopolies across sectors like healthcare, tech, and agriculture. From blocking billion-dollar mergers to introducing comprehensive new merger guidelines and launching a "whole-of-government" Competition Council, the Biden administration has begun to deconstruct the neoliberal policy regime responsible for America’s concentration crisis. Our report lays out how actions by FTC Chair Khan, AAG Kanter and others have started dismantling monopoly structures and redistributing power to consumers, small businesses and workers. It also provides recommendations for a future administration to build on this rigorous approach.
New White Paper with MIT Lays Out Policy Roadmap to Reform Investor-Owned Electric Utilities. While healthcare, food, and housing usually dominate kitchen table discussions, there’s another cost that’s weighing on working families: the electric bill. Our latest white paper, Reforming the Utility System to Better Serve the American Public [[link removed]] , examines the investor-owned electric utility market through an antimonopoly lens, and lays out a roadmap to make the utility system better serve the public interest. It serves as an accessible primer on a complex topic that is increasingly relevant to state and local policymakers, regulators, and advocates. Stay tuned for more utilities-related resources in the next few months, including a deep dive into investor-owned utilities’ rate-of-return business model and a toolkit for state and local lawmakers.
Holding Google Legal Counsel Kent Walker Accountable. If you’ve been following the multiple, ongoing antitrust lawsuits against Google, then you’ve likely seen judges condemning [[link removed]] Google’s shady evidence destruction. This practice stems from policies implemented by one of Google’s top lawyers, Kent Walker, who instructed Google employees to turn off their chat history by default—a practice referred to internally as “Vegas mode”--and to abuse attorney-client privilege by copying lawyers on routine business. Deleting court-ordered evidence isn’t just a dirty legal trick. It is also a potential violation of California’s Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers. That’s why, along with USvGoogle [[link removed]] coalition partners Tech Oversight Project and CheckMyAds, Economic Liberties is leading an effort [[link removed]] to urge the California State Bar to investigate Walker. The letter, featured in The Verge [[link removed]] , is calling for an investigation and appropriate accountability for executives who have coached their clients on how to get away with breaking the law.
Shaping the Narrative on Tariffs and Trade Policy . With the election mere days away, there are clear signs that one aspect trade policy could be a decisive issue: tariffs. But tariffs’ effect on prices is not as cut and dry as many pundits would have you believe. As a September Rethink Trade white paper explains [[link removed]] , tariffs are a bipartisan tool that have been used for decades in the U.S. and by many other nations to build critical manufacturing sectors, enforce trade law, and counter unfair imports—and their use does not automatically lead to higher retail prices for consumers. Decades of anti-worker trade deals have offshored jobs and diminished America’s resilience and security. The Biden-Harris administration retained some tariffs from the Trump administration, and implemented additional targeted tariffs paired with investments in solar, EV, and other green manufacturing that have led to the highest level of American factory construction in 30 years. A piece this month in the The New York Review [[link removed]] , written by Senior Advisor Zephyr Teachout, tells the full story of this paradigm shift and breaks down how the use of smart tariffs could benefit post-industrial regions across the country. Teachout also joined Rethink Trade Director Lori Wallach for a special podcast episode [[link removed]] earlier this week, where they discussed the importance of getting trade policy right in the next administration. Whatever happens next week, Economic Liberties will continue to advocate for smart trade policy that benefits workers, communities, small businesses and consumers—instead of just big corporations.


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